Arlong bit down, Lucy's arm muscles expanding as she shouted in pain. Everyone watched tensely, hoping that she would be okay. The captain of the Straw Hats wrapped her arm around Arlong's neck and leaned forward, stretching her foot straight up into the air. With a rubbery snap, it exploded downwards and smashed into Arlong's head, knocking him into the ground and making him let go of her elbow at the same time. Lucy rolled away, nursing her elbow as she sat up.
Arlong sat up, too, rubbing his head.
"Is her arm gonna make it?" Johnny fretted.
Lucy ripped the teeth out of her elbow, squealing a little as she did so. I furrowed my brow in sympathy. To be bitten by jaws that deadly... that had to freaking hurt.
Suddenly, almost too quickly and smoothly for me to notice, Arlong dived into the sea. In fact, I might not have noticed at all if my neck hadn't started tingling.
"Huh?" my captain asked as she stood up. "Where is he?"
"Luffy!" Nami called. "In the water!"
"Arlong jumped into the sea!" I confirmed.
"The sea?" Lucy blinked and peered into the rectangular pool. A dark shape was just visible under the surface and a fin was cutting through the water. "Whoa!" she exclaimed. "It's a shark!"
We fell over anime style. Again.
"THAT'S ARLONG, IDIOT!" Usopp corrected her.
The fin disappeared, as did the dark shape.
"Oh?" Lucy commented. "He dove down."
"Not good," I muttered. "Fishmen are twice as strong as they are in underwater. If Arlong plans on fighting her from the water, she's in huge trouble."
The villagers and the bounty hunters started yelling at her to hide, or to get away from there, but Lucy replied that if she ran away she wouldn't be able to our captain. I grinned and crossed my arms. Lucy may be an idiot at times, but when it came down to it, she sure did know what was best. Then my neck tingled again.
"Lucy, he's coming up!" I told her. "You've gotta dodge it or you'll be ripped apart!"
"Yosha!" she said. My captain leaped to the side, and not a moment too soon; Just as she did so, Arlong came flying out of the water at such a speed that he didn't stop until he crashed into the second floor of Arlong Park. If my neck hadn't tingled, I wouldn't have known it was him. It just looked like a watery blur.
"A torpedo?" I heard Sanji guess. Huh. Hadn't heard him for a while. I guess he was simply too far away.
"Something just shot out of the sea!" Johnny yelped.
"Yeah," I said. "That was Arlong."
"Arlong did that?!"
The fishman captain came out of the rubble of the second floor wall. "Oh? You dodged that well. JYAHAHAHA! But dodging is just dodging; the next one will send you to hell! SHARK ON DARTS!" He flashed down from the ledge with the force of a cannon, and Lucy rolled out of the way, yelping in surprise. Arlong slammed into the cement and stuck there, and for a second I thought that it would make the perfect opportunity for Lucy to attack him; but a chunk of cement around him broke away and he fell into the pool with it.
"SHARK ON DARTS!"
FWOOSH!
Lucy only barely dodged again, her long hair falling crazily behind her. She landed lightly on the ground, but he tore at her again, and she jumped into the air, out of the way.
"Lucy, hide!" Usopp said, noticing where Arlong had gone. "He went back into the water!"
Johnny and Yosaku started saying that again, too, and she just looked at them pointedly this time, not even bothering to say anything. They sighed in defeat and snapped their mouths shut.
"I'm gonna break that nose of his!" she proclaimed, glaring at the sea. "Bring it on! Sharky!" She blew steam out her nose.
"You just got lucky before; you barely dodged it!" Usopp tried again. "But if he hits you this time, then you're doomed!"
I had to hand it to him. He sure was persistent.
"GUM-GUM SHIELD!" Lucy yelled, holding her hand straight out, grabbing the ends of her fingers, and stretching them so that they blocked her chest.
"What's that stance?" wondered Yosaku.
Johnny put a finger to his chin in worry. "Does she think that'll stop him?"
My neck tingled again. "Oi! He's coming up even faster this time!"
"FASTER?!" the villagers gasped.
Arlong came tearing up out of the water and smashed into Lucy, who was thrown up into the air with the force. As everyone stared in horror and the bounty hunting duo shouted that she got stabbed, Lucy suddenly giggled and looked up.
"She's alright!" I noticed. Her fingers were wrapped around Arlong's face, one just above his nose. They flew through the air together and Lucy bent forward, then suddenly leaped off and stuck to the wall like she was performing one of Mario's wall jumps.
"I stopped your little trick, so I guess you can't use it anymore!" she said.
"SHARK ON DARTS!"
"WHOA!"
"Spoke too soon," I muttered darkly.
Arlong was hanging on the underside of the roof of the third floor and Lucy was falling through the air. I gritted my teeth. This wasn't good. There was no way for her to dodge now! But apparently Lucy didn't care about that because she simply complained, "You dork! Haven't you used that enough already?"
I raised my eyebrow. "He doesn't appear to have a very wide array of attacks, does he?"
He ignored her and dived yet again. "You're finished!" he claimed.
She folded her hands behind her head and yelled, "Take this! Gum-Gum Fish Net!"
I chuckled. Fish net, eh? How appropriate!
She flung her fingers forward and they all stretched out in different directions, curving around Arlong. They folded together again and came to a stop, as Lucy cheered, "Fishing! Let's fish!" She swung him below her and this soared up a little, then retracted her fingers and slammed her feet together. "YOSHA! And now... Gum-Gum Spear!" Her feet shot down like a spear and slammed him into the cement.
"Amazing!" I laughed.
"SHE DID IT!" the villagers yelled.
Lucy retracted her feet and spun again, then started to fall again. "Oh? Is he dead?"
Arlong sat up, his eyes suddenly having... changed? I felt a sense of fear flow down my spine. I'd seen enough movies with angry sharks to know that they only did that when they were seriously mad. Arlong looked like he was about to go berserk!
"Arlong... with those eyes..." Nami stammered, her own eyes wide with horror. "I've never seen him like this!"
"Nami..." I said sadly.
"YOU INFERIOR HUMAN!" Arlong erupted, and with a clean swipe of his arm, he grabbed Lucy by the hair and started swinging her over his head like a lasso, making her stretch out in the process. "HOW DID YOU DO THIS TO ME, A FISHMAN?"
SMASH. My captain was thrown into another column. We all stared and gasped in horror. Then she sat up, blinking in surprise. "Wow, that really shook me up." She pouted and dusted herself off. "I don't think he's hurt but he sure is angry..."
Arlong dived at Lucy again and she yelled, jumping out of the way and grabbing onto the ceiling above. The bastard punched through the walls and came back out carrying a long, jagged saw blade. Lucy stepped onto the second floor balcony and said, "What's that?"
"The kiribachi!" Nami gasped.
"With huge teeth!" Johnny added, crying anime tears.
He swung back, lifting his leg up in the process, and let out an animal-like yell of anger. Then he jumped to the second floor—how that was possible, I have no idea —and gave a deadly slash downward, right at Lucy, who jumped up to the third floor and wasn't hurt. He still managed to rip apart the overhang, though. Arlong followed Lucy up to the next floor with another tremendous blow, but like before she jumped to the next floor up. They continued, and I couldn't help thinking it was a one-sided game of cat and mouse... and the loser would lose their lives.
"Get out of there, Luce!" I called.
"He won't stop!" said a white-coated old man with a pointy chin behind me. Because of the red cross on his hat, I assumed he was the village doctor. "There's no way she can escape him!"
"Lucy'll find a way," I told him. "She always does."
"Oh."
A sudden shout made me swirl around. Lucy had just jumped to the top of Arlong Park, the very top floor, and there was no where for her to run to. She was just outside the far left window and was about to dash around the side of the building when Arlong came up and slashed with the kiribachi. And just like that... they disappeared.
"Hey, where are they?" Usopp fretted. "Is she alive?"
"I think Lucy escaped through the window," I guessed, noticing the now-demolished left window.
Nami's eyes widened and her body started shaking. My eyebrows shot up and I swiveled around to look at her. She had her hands covering her mouth and she was staring up at the window in... recognition?
I remembered the anime and smiled.
Johnny and Yosaku were staring up at the top floor in horror, bug-eyed and gasping repeatedly. I blinked and frowned, wondering if they'd hyperventilate if I left them like that, and then wondering if it really mattered. They didn't actually do much... Wow, that was really cold , I realized, wincing.
There was a tense moment of silence that seemed to last forever. Whether it was ten minutes or ten seconds, no one could tell. Everyone was muttering amongst themselves, wondering what the heck was going on in that room. We had no way of knowing what was happening in there. But then something exploded out of the room. At first I tensed, readying myself to catch the object if it was Lucy (not that it would actually help, since she was rubber and, like, six or seven stories up, but hey! I wasn't thinking), but then I noticed that it was a... desk?
"It's a desk!" Usopp announced unnecessarily.
Johnny and Yosaku sighed in relief.
"Oh, it's just a desk," Johnny heaved.
Yosaku rubbed the back of his hand, laughing nervously. "That scared me. For a second, I thought it was Lucy-aneki or something."
"Oi, partner!" his friend reprimanded. "Don't you have faith in Lucy-aneki's strength?!"
"But Johnny, you were worried, too!"
"Nuh-uh!"
"What age are you two?" I cut in sharply, my eye twitching. "Three years old? Four?"
"Eighteen," Johnny grumbled.
"THEN FUCKIN' ACT LIKE IT! Sheesh." Excuse my language, but I was so anxious for Lucy to just win already that I couldn't help but swear.
The desk smashed against the cement foundations of Arlong Park, reducing itself to nothing but a large, chaotic mess of splinters and timber. Something else burst out of the room: A cabinet this time. Then a chair. Then some papers that looked like maps. A picture frame holding a giant map came out, too.
"Lucy..." Nami said, shaking.
"What the heck?" Usopp complained from his perch in the hole. "What's with all this furniture flying out?"
As the maps fluttered to the ground like hundreds of flat birds, the tension in the entrance of Arlong Park grew. There was a pause where nothing else came out, and then suddenly the wall on the left of the building, the side we couldn't see, just totally collapsed, chunks of plaster tumbling to the ground and covering the area in a milky dust.
"This fight is incredibly intense..." muttered Yosaku.
"Yeah," Johnny agreed worriedly, "a true fight to the death."
"Thank you," murmured Nami, and I turned to see tears building up in her eyes. "Thank you, Lucy..."
I smiled.
SMASH! Something long and thin barreled out of the top of Arlong Park, snapping to a halt. It was like a pole, but I could just make out a sharp curve at the very top. It was... a leg! And the only leg that could possibly be that long was Lucy's, because she was rubber! As we watched, it suddenly descended with lightning speed. There was a sound like a humongous explosion, and then an enormous dust cloud billowed out of the bottom two stories. Everyone gasped in surprise and Usopp gave a kind of strangled yell.
"Look!" shouted the doctor. "That last attack is causing Arlong Park to—" A rumble like thunder, but unlike it at the same time, shook the ground and cut him off.
Starting with the top layer of the evil cake that was Arlong Park, the building was imploding. Something shattered on the cement with a metallic ring—a jagged pole with a flag that had the same mark as the one Nami had on her shoulder.
"No way! It's collapsing!" someone reported. "Everyone, run!"
The villagers all started sprinting out of the way, but Nami refused to move, saying Lucy was still inside. I took it upon myself to simply pick her up, sling her over my shoulder, and run off. "She'll be fine!" I said. "She always is, you should know that by now!"
"But Lucy—"
"Just shut up! You'll inhale too much dust and you might choke!"
That shut her up.
And behind us, Arlong Park finally collapsed to the ground, not a single part of it left standing. A forceful wind pushed against us as I turned around, and I raised a hand to shield myself.
"LUCY!" Nami screamed.
"Lucy..." I muttered.
The wind died down just enough for me to here Yosaku gasp, "Arlong Park is... demolished! Aneki... what happened inside there, aneki?"
"Lucy's not gonna hear you, ya know," I sighed, but there was no edge to it.
Rays of sunlight broke through the storm clouds overhead. Wait, did I forget to mention the storm clouds? Because for most of the fight, these huge, ominous cotton candies had been hanging over Arlong Park. But now the sun had broken through and the clouds were swept away by the wind, almost as if it had been planned by nature. And someone burst out of the rubble that used to be the home base of the Arlong Pirates, small, slender, and shadowed by the sun at her back.
"Lucy!" gasped Nami, an ecstatic grin spreading across her face.
Johnny and Yosaku were so relieved that they were reduced to tears, hugging each other and moaning, "AAAA-NEEE-KIIII!"
I smirked and said nothing, just folded my hands across my chest and winced. My hand was still on fire, though I hadn't really noticed it because of the tense air, and when your hand is broken, touching it in any way, shape, or form is not something you really want to do.
"I need to get to the sea," I muttered. "See ya."
"NAMI!" roared Lucy as I retreated to the ocean. "YOU ARE MY NAKAMA!"
As I stumbled over to the sea, holding my wounded side and trying not to touch, my shattered hand, I heard Nami sniff, "Yes."
And my smirk widened into a grin as large as Lucy's.