Ice dust filled the sky.
The colossal crash echoed across the empty tundra for a long time before it finally died away.
Smoker clenched two cigars between his teeth so hard the filters were mangled beyond recognition.
He stared at the bottomless ice crater in the distance, then at the red freak on the ice mountain twerking at thin air, and a wave of absurdity washed over him.
That was an Admiral of the Navy.
The top battle power of the World Government, a "monster" among monsters.
And he had been sent flying head-on?
Defeated in a straight-up contest of strength?
"This is a joke…," Smoker snarled from the back of his throat.
As a Marine, the face of justice couldn't be trampled like this.
Even if victory was impossible, he couldn't just stand and watch.
"White Serpent!"
With a roar, his arms turned to smoke.
Billowing white fumes blasted out like jet exhaust, propelling his fist toward the distant Deadpool.
Even if he couldn't hurt the man, he could at least restrain him and buy Kuzan time to regroup.
Yet
the instant his fist skimmed the ice
a large hand shot from a nearby snowdrift and clamped onto his solid wrist.
The hand still carried a lingering chill, its palm thick with calluses.
"Don't go, Smoker," came a lazy voice edged with rare gravity.
Smoker froze, his smoke form dispersing.
He whipped his head around.
Kuzan was rising slowly from the broken ice.
The normally immaculate Admiral looked like a wreck: his white suit vest was streaked with dust, his curly forelocks were plastered to his scalp, and a thin red trickle ran from the corner of his mouth.
He wiped the blood, his eyes fixed through cracked sunglasses on the distant red figure.
"Kuzan, you"
Smoker's pupils shrank.
Hurt?
With a single punch?
"Yare-yare… that really hurt," Kuzan said, rolling his neck with audible cracks.
"That guy's body is now tough enough to rival the monsters in the New World."
"This fight is out of your league."
Veins bulged on the hand gripping Smoker's arm.
He hated it, but he knew Kuzan was right the shockwave alone had almost blown him away.
A Vice Admiral had no place in a clash of that magnitude.
"Pull back. Protect the survivors. Get to the warship."
Kuzan slipped his hands into his pockets, his tall back casting a long shadow across the ice.
"Now, I'll get serious."
"But"
"That's an order."
Kuzan's sidelong glance was final.
Smoker ground his teeth, shot Deadpool one last glare, and whirled away as a ribbon of white smoke.
Deadpool's mask eyes stretched comically as Kuzan stood up, apparently unscathed.
"Whoa! As expected of an Admiral!"
Mordred, steering the body, let the voice turn obnoxious.
Hands behind his head in mock terror, he jogged in place.
"That punch was me at one-hundred-twenty percent every ounce of my strength and you're still alive? You scary monster, you."
[Astonishment value from Kuzan +399!]
[Astonishment value from Smoker +266!]
Sweet.
This is what farming feels like.
Better than killing: dancing on the nerves of top-tiers and grinding their worldviews underfoot it was addictive.
"Give me a break," Kuzan muttered, ignoring the chatter.
"If anyone's the monster here, it's you."
"An unkillable thing that can out-muscle me…"
Kuzan flexed an open hand; frost howled into a vibrating sphere.
If brawling wouldn't work, he'd switch to his specialty stalling for time.
"Ice Block: Pheasant Beak!"
Boom!
A far huger, denser ice bird than before shrieked and dived, its wings spanning a hundred meters.
"Wow, same move again?" Deadpool's jaw dropped in theatrical panic.
Trying to kite me?
"The same trick never works on a Saint uh, on the great Deadpool!"
While he chattered, his right arm dissolved; black-red flesh writhed like boiling magma, re-knitting in moments into a ten-meter whip of tendrils tipped with a bone hook.
"Catch!"
He snapped the whip; it cracked the air and met the phoenix head-on.
"Blacklight Virus: Whipfist Form!"
Crack!
A diamond rain of ice shards drifted down.
Before Kuzan could blink, the whip curved like a serpent, ignoring inertia, and lashed straight at his face.
"Hmm?"
He shattered into icy motes and re-formed a hundred meters away.
The whip struck the ice, carving a hundred-meter gouge rimmed with creeping black corrosion.
Kuzan studied the trench, his brows knitting behind his shades.
"Not just power… it can shift shape and strike at range."
A fighting style unheard of: Logia-type fluidity, Zoan toughness, Paramecia tricks all in one.
"Hey, Curly!" Deadpool shouted from an ice spur.
Two cartoonish pistols had appeared in his hands Desert Eagles provided by his character card, now sheathed in black chitin with pulsing muzzles: living bio-guns.
"Much as I'd love some whip-play, if you like to run"
"let's go full Wild West!"
Eat my American quick-draw.
Bang-bang-bang!
The muzzles spat not flame but black-red blood mist; the bullets weren't metal but ultra-dense bone slugs.