One thing Luffy was beginning to understand about the new monsters the World Government was creating, and something they shared with Pacifistas: they were stupidly tough. His pipe had a dent in it, and as impossible as it was, he could feel a headache coming from all the slamming against walls and floors the thing was doing to him. Slamming him against anything it could manage, frankly.
The only silver lining of the situation was that this one wasn't nearly as fast as the mongoose had been. Tough and more flexible, to be sure, but it wasn't quite the greased lightning that particular monstrosity had been. So none of the monster's flailing was quite capable of whipping Luffy free, nor of breaking his iron grip. But a battle of attrition was not to his favour. He had too far left to go to waste more stamina than necessary playing rodeo with an oversized bug. At least the Sphinx had gotten away.
Taking a deep breath, Luffy scrunched his eyebrows and ran through everything he had picked up on the monster: how it moved, how its parts moved, any areas it was being careful about, and most importantly, the pace of its movements from fast to slow. And from there, Luffy brainstormed some potential openings.
Seeing his chance for one of them, he allowed the monster's momentum to swing him forward before finally letting go of one of its antennae so that he was flung upward. Its glaring lenses fell on him, and it stabbed one of its sickle-arm out at him—
"HOMERUN!"
—which is when he released the other antenna and spun forward, slamming all of the force he could muster through his pipe and into its sickle. The increased momentum accelerated the arm further on its path and stabbed it right into its own body, the blade easily sinking a good few feet into the monster's torso.
"SHKREEEE!"
Good news: it penetrated, and from the pained screech that it produced, did some serious damage. Bad news: the monster's instinctual reaction was a twist-and-flex combination that hit Luffy in midair and batted the rubber-man away. Luffy bounced once before landing on his feet, but well out of melee range. Which, judging from the cloud of spores and rancid yellow fluid leaking out of the gash instead of blood, might have actually been a good thing.
"Argh… this is worse than that one tiger with rabies," Luffy groused. He tightened his scarf around his mouth and nose, crouching to leap back into the fight—
"MROOOOO!" CRUNCH!
—but a black-and-white blur shot in out of nowhere and rammed into the monster's side, propelling it clean into—and halfway through—a wall.
Luffy blinked, tilting his head in confusion. "Ah… what?"
The bug-beast was in much the same state of confusion, chittering and screeching as it yanked its upper torso out of the stonework, swinging its scythes wide—
KA-CRUNCH! "SHKREEEEE!"
But it was interrupted by a mighty impact to its left limb, which rendered it a non-factor by mangling it into a pulp. The spiked club that had delivered the impact remained stuck until the wielder planted a boat-sized hoof on the monster's chest and pulled it out with a disgusting squelching noise.
"MROOOO!"
Luffy couldn't help himself. He gaped in naked shock at the giant… cow-person—Minotaurus, right, that was what Cross called it!—bellowing its supremacy. It raised the club again and laid into its opponent with all the grace—and effectiveness—of a happy toddler in a china shop.
Well, Luffy might have been dumb, but he sure as shit wasn't dumb enough to pass this up. "Guys!" he called out to Galdino and Buggy, who were surrounded by a few piles of battered infected beast bodies. "Time to go!"
"Go where?!" Buggy demanded as the two jogged up. "They're still going at it, and even if there are any guards anywhere near here, I don't see them opening the gates to a pack of convicts!"
"I can handle that!" Galdino offered, coalescing the outline of a key in his palm. "Just get me at the lock and—!"
"Not the stairs!" Luffy interrupted with a chop of his hand, his other hand digging through his bag. "They'll have a small army waiting for us in there by now; we can't go down that way!"
"Wha—Then how do you suggest we get even deeper into this place?!" Buggy demanded.
SMASH!
"Preferably before one of those things kills the other, and then comes to kill us!"
Indeed, that was an all-too-real threat they faced. Despite being thoroughly tenderized, the insect-monster had pulled itself together enough to retaliate, which put the two back on equal terms despite the missing limb. Bestial horn and iron club were matched blow-for-blow by rancid claw and jaw. Blood and spores flew, neither beast even bothering to dodge or block, only to rip one another apart limb-from-limb that much more efficiently.
Despite themselves, Buggy and Galdino found themselves holding each other and quivering at the scene.
"We do what we did last time: we go down. Straight down," was all Luffy said as he withdrew his hand from his bag, the panicked protests of his companions washing over him. Out came a shell, which he carefully held in his palm. He kneeled, pressed it down to the floor—
WHUMP!
And forcefully choked down a blue streak born of pain and more than a few shows that Cross probably wouldn't have liked Soundbite sharing.
~o~
Conis stepped forward, gingerly placing a vaguely familiar box on the table.
"This is the Reject Dial that Wiper gave me. You'll get a lot better use out of it than I will; your rubber powers should minimize or even neutralize the recoil. If you're running low on energy or else you need to conserve it, use this instead of punching. It'll be at least as strong as you normally are."
Luffy nodded, carefully extracting the shell and flexing around it. He slammed his other fist into it, aimed it out of a window, flexed, and hissed in pain when it fired.
"Are you all right?" Conis asked, alarmed.
"Ugh… It's nothing I can't handle. Just feels like it almost took my arm off."
"THAT'S NOT SOMETHING TO TREAT… ah… casually… er…" Nami trailed off. Nobody needed to say that the current circumstances were anything but casual.
Securing the shell back in its box, Luffy nodded and smiled. "Thanks, Conis. I'll be careful with it."
~o~
"Gnnneeeeergh…" Luffy ground out as he clutched his throbbing shoulder. "Still feels like Arlong's chewing on me again…"
Gritting his teeth, Luffy pushed past the pain and took in the results. Certainly, the floor was nicely cratered, but there was very visibly not a pit in the floor, no path below, and no way down to the next Hell. In spite of the sheer impossibility of it all, Impel Down held strong.
"Oh, come on!" Luffy groaned, very much dreading the idea of having to do that again. "How the hell was a Sphinx stronger than this thing?!"
Buggy shook his head, trying his best to un-ring his bell from the delirium the blast had slammed him and Galdino with, then tensed furiously at something just past Luffy's shoulder. "No clue, but I'd suggest you figure it out fast before we get PASTED!"
Luffy snapped his head around and immediately tensed in terror.
The source of said terror was the clash of titans that had just concluded, the Minotaurus the one left standing. The demi-bovine was bleeding from a dozen and ten wounds, not to mention a steady stream of blood from its slack jaw; had several visible compound fractures; and was panting heavily, but at least it was standing.
The invading monster, in stark contrast, could only be described as a mess, a crumpled heap of shattered metal and oozing, slightly twitching fungus. Incoherent, disturbingly fluid wheezes were the only sign of life, besides the spasmodic twitches that were its attempts to get up.
The victor of the brawl locked eyes with Luffy, staring, the two bruisers taking the measure of each other.
The minotaur broke the lock first, snorting balefully. It raised its hoof and took a ground-shaking stomp towards the infiltrate-ees.
Luffy tensed in preparation for a fight, and then tensed further at what was going on behind the beast. The Minotaurus's own fight wasn't quite as done as it apparently thought.
Visible above the horns, the monster's head and tail could be seen rising, stinger extended and poised to strike, oh crap—!
"DUCK!" Luffy roared, flinging out a projectile from his pocket. Whether it was the missile or Luffy's warning, the cow-man did duck, allowing what Luffy threw to slap against the monster's face:
One of the emergency snacks he'd smuggled in was a sea king steak.
The entire room seemed to freeze over. The Minotaurus, the monster, the other escapees… heck, even Luffy himself, to an extent, all went stock still.
"…Straw Hat," Buggy grit, hands twitching as he slowly reached for Luffy's throat. "I. Am going to give you one chance to explain to me… what in the flashy hell that was supposed to—!?"
"GROOOOOOARGH!"
And barely a second later, the canal behind the monster erupted, and a particularly toothy Sea King locked its jaw down on the monster's head, thrashing and yanking viciously in a concerted effort to remove the thing's cranium.
There was another moment of (relative) silence until Luffy smirked and crossed his arms. "All according to cake…or whatever it is Soundbite says when he's being smug."
"THE HELL IT WAS!" Galdino snapped, forming a large hammer with his powers just to slam it against Luffy's rubber skull.
And, at the same time, the Minotaurus saw the opportunity for what it was. Given a choice between the humans and the monster, his mind focused on the invader whose compatriots had intruded on its territory and brought down the rest of its pack. And with it unable to strike, he raised his club once more and brought it down with all of his strength, right onto the stinging tail.
With a most grotesque and satisfying squelch, the appendage collapsed in on itself, its means of corrupting more of his fellow beasts crushed beyond all repair.
"MRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" the Minotaurus roared, loosing a cry that shook the floor. Or rather, 'the Floor'. It was a statement of triumph, echoed by an echoing wave of bestial roars and howls from the entire rest of the floor.
The distant sounds of footsteps and brawls slowly crescendoed as the ones responsible drew closer, every last beast on the floor converging to put an end to their oppressor. And every able-bodied prisoner charged in alongside them, mutual enmity put aside in the face of a greater foe.
The inhabitants of the Beast Hell, willing and unwilling, flooded into the room, a tide of furious flesh that descended on the monster's broken body in a moshpit of vicious, unadulterated primal violence and started to—
"SHKREE-KREE-KREEGHRGHHH…!"
…well. The words 'to shreds' and 'limb from limb' were perhaps rather more literal this time around. The brutality was… excessive.
The infiltrate-ees could only gape at the hellish mauling, really trying to come to terms with whatever in the hell it was they were watching.
"Ahh…s-so…" Buggy weakly said. "You, er… You think this'll finally kill that thing?"
"Well—" Luffy hedged.
"GRAO-ARGH!" the returned Sphinx yowled, clamping its jaws down on the monster's thorax and pulling. Pulling and pulling…
SCH-KRACK!
Until the monster, well, became half the creature it had been ten seconds earlier.
Buggy's face turned green, audibly dry-heaving. "Never mind—hurp—never mind, then, that thing's death was as flashy as it is."
"Err…" Luffy hedged again, scratching the back of his head.
"Oh, you are kidding me!" Galdino barked, jabbing his finger at the flying chunks of eviscerated flesh. "That thing's been torn in half, emphasis on the 'torn'!"
"Yeah, and I saw one of these things get up after losing its head, so I'm not really holding my breath," Luffy grunted darkly. "What they need to kill is—oh, hang on a sec." He cupped his mouth and raised his voice. "HEY, THAT THING WON'T DIE UNLESS YOU TAKE OUT THIS BIG UGLY BALL OF—!"
SHKRUUUUUNCH!
There was another wet rip of flesh and metal, and then a pulsing sphere of meat and Tartarus knows what else was tossed out of the fray, messily landing and rolling to Luffy's feet.
"…huh, that's actually it," Luffy blinked in surprise before grinning and popping a thumbs-up. "YEAH, THIS IS IT! DON'T WORRY, I'LL—!"
"Moo."
Luffy looked up from the hellbeast's core, butterflies in his stomach at the Minotaurus standing right in front of him. Luffy looked up at him, meeting the beast's eyes. They stared for a moment…
"Uh… hi?" Luffy waved with a nervous grin.
In response, the Minotaurus snorted, spun its club into a reverse grip, took hold of it with both hands, and thrust the tip downwards.
SKRUNCH!
The impact smashed the beast's heart to smithereens, and thus ended its reign of terror on the Wild Beasts' floor.
The rubber man considered the action, surprised and more than a little wary. "Uh… thanks… for that? So, uh…" He surreptitiously reached for his pipe. "Are we going to fight now, or…?"
Krr… kreee…
All present froze at the creaking that suddenly filled the plaza. They looked around for the source of the noise.
Kruuuunch...
Right as it intensified… coming from below them.
"…oh, this is going to hurt," Galdino whimpered miserably, his eyes wide, full of terror, and aimed down.
KRRRRASH!
And with that final temptation, the floor dropped out from under the pirates, dropping them into the abyss without another word.
Well, almost without.
"WAAAAAAAGH!" "OH GOOOOOD!" "WOOHOOHOOOO!"
But with the limited point of impact, it wasn't hard for the Minotaurus to step back from the edge of crumbling mortar. When the stone settled into a stable hole, the Minotaurus cautiously stepped forward to look down the hole, scratching at his head.
A giant-blooded prisoner grunted as he walked up to the Jailer Beast, patting his shoulder comfortingly. "Don't worry, they'll be fine. They're tough as nails, those three!"
"Mooooo," the Minotaurus grunted back, nodding in agreement.
They stared down in solemn companionship.
"Moo."
Aaaaand then the bovine beast's fist lashed out and blasted the prisoner into the nearest wall.
He then wheeled around to face the moshpit of beasts and prisoners and hefted up his club with a howling roar as it charged back into the fray, concussing whoever or whatever he could get his hands on.
"MROOOOOO!"
And like that, all was at least momentarily right with the second Hell again.
-o-
Level 3 was the quietest of the levels of Impel Down. There were no howling beasts like in Levels 5 and 2, and none of the pained screams of Levels 1 and 4. It was simply… hot. Not even a heat that burned or scorched, merely a heat that sapped energy, both psychologically and in the form of massive amounts of salt and water that the jailers did only the bare minimum to replenish. And only if they were feeling particularly generous. Or more commonly, particularly cruel.
The changes to Impel Down over the last week had not done much to change this. Well, up until some of the ceiling crumbled to pieces and delivered several tons of rock, two pirates, and one ex-agent onto the sandy dunes.
For a moment after their landing, the silence returned.
And then all three humans burst out of the sand, sputtering fit to burst.
"Grrrrgh… you wanna know something, Straw Hat? I hate sand," Galdino spat, shaking grains out of his hair. "It's coarse, and rough, and gets everywhere." Wiping sweat from his brow, he held up his hand and tried to form some wax. Key word being tried, because the wax 3 he made immediately sagged out of shape. "And it's hot enough to melt my wax. Because of course it is."
"Then why did you try to take over Vivi's country?" Luffy asked bluntly as he shook out his cloak.
"Money, and if Crocodile was ever good at one thing, it was inflating someone's ego to the point you'd do the dumbest things," Galdino grumbled as he yanked the last of the sand he could manage out of his hairdo.
"Must have been a lot of money, then…" the Straw Hat mused.
"…I really miss when you were a dumbass."
"Join the club. And ugh, nasty environment here," Buggy spat. Literally spat, brushing the sand off his tongue. "Never thought I'd be coming here remotely willingly, but we're making great progress. Just a little longer like this and we'll be free as birds!"
Luffy snapped his head around to glare at the clown through his outfit. "Don't say that yet. Whenever Cross or anyone else says that, things start getting bad. And the last two times, it was the same Warlord."
Buggy paused in the process of brushing sand off his tongue. His head slowly separated from his neck and slowly turned around to display a grin that could only be described as 'shit-eating.'
"Come on, Straw Hat. What's the worst that could happen? It's not like Magellan is here yet, and nothing else in this prison could stand up to you."
"…Buggy—"
"I'm having the best day of my life, things couldn't get any worse than they have been already!"
"Buggy—!"
"And it's not like anyone else has the balls to attack Impel Down, or like we'll have to deal with any more of those monsters that you smashed up, you already know most of the tricks—"
"BUGGY, I SWEAR I'LL—!"
"AND BESIDES, NOTHING EXCITING EVER HAPPENS HERE, THE VOLCANOES HAVE BEEN DORMANT FOR YEARS, THE WALLS HAVEN'T BEEN BREACHED IN CENTURIES, AND I'M TWO DAYS FROM RETIREMENT WITH A WIFE AND TWO FLASHY KIDS! GYAHAHAHAHAHAHA—!"
-o-
In an intact guardroom one floor below, a sea of deadpan glares watched the scene on the security screens.
"He's going on suicide watch when this is over, isn't he?" one of the guards watching the mayhem deadpanned.
"That's if he survives that long," another answered.
"Which he won't once Warden Magellan gets his hands on him, of that I assure you."
The guards all hastily scrambled to their feet and snapped to attention as a diminutive demon strolled to the front of the crowd, his bored gaze locked on the screen with the cackling clown.
"At ease, men," Saldeath stated dismissively, patiently tapping his pitchfork in his palm. "And report: what are the positions of our troops on the Starvation Hell? As well as the location of…" His neutral frown dipped further. "The BioMEGA at the moment."
"Um…" Another watchman started scanning the screens. "Guard contingents are forming up as we speak, Blugori are en route to encircle them, and… the BioMEGA actually looks to be clear on the other side of the Level."
"Mmmmmm…" Saldeath hummed low, his frown deepening and his voice full of intoned disapproval.
"That doesn't sound like the response of a man whose plans are proceeding apace, Guard Saldeath."
The demon-man's grip on his pitchfork twitched slightly, and he glanced up at the coat-wearing man who'd stepped up alongside him. A man whom all the other guards in the room were glaring at, both subtly and not.
Still, much as the man's presence annoyed him, he wasn't boorish enough to leave him hanging. "That's because matters are most certainly not what they appear, Commodore Smoker."
"And how's that, huh?" Smoker said, blowing out a cloud of smoke as he regarded the shorter man with a brow cocked inquisitively. "You heard it yourself, your men are on their way, and the clown's words are about to get shoved down his throat."
"Except that they won't be by us."
Smoker's perpetual frown deepened at the self-deprecation, however minor. "What do you mean?"
Saldeath raised his pitchfork and jabbed its tines at the screen. "That fool's statement is sure to invite retribution down upon him, but consider the following." He swept his weapon over the other screens. "It won't be delivered into our hands. It can't be, our men aren't close enough or in enough force to deliver the appropriate karmic balancing. If Warden Magellan or even the Warlord Hancock were to come upon them—"
Luckily, nobody knew Smoker enough to read the kink in his smoke cloud for the twitch it was.
"—then it might be appropriate, but under the current circumstances? The clown's comeuppance isn't going to be delivered by us. Which begs the question…"
Saldeath outright scowled, the grip on his pitchfork's shaft leaving his knuckles white as snow.
"What is about to happen?"
And it was then, right then, that the world proved that this particular retribution required two-factor authentication.
Retribution that was delivered…
KRABOOM!
With a blast that shook the entire floor—nay, the whole of Impel Down, throwing guards clean off their feet and knocking the Central Visual Snail off-kilter badly enough that over a dozen of its screens were fuzzed out. In a credit to the Snail's breeder, and the design of the Vis-Snail network itself, those screens quickly righted themselves, though the picture quality was a good deal spottier.
"And there it is!" Saldeath spat, leaping back to his feet and swinging his pitchfork out. "Status report! What was that, and what in Tartarus is going on?!"
"Receiving reports now!" one of the guards, back on his feet, called out, pressing his snail's speaker to his ear. "Several instances of damage and minor riots, but nothing major! Getting a number of green lights! Level 1, secure! Level 2, riot! Level 3—!"
"Red alert from Level 3! I repeat, Red! Alert!" another guard barked in a panic.
"Details, now!"
"I—panicked reports coming from the airlocks, some sort of an explosion, but the structural integrity hasn't been—! Wait, what?!" The guard fell silent for a bit before paling. "What do you mean, 'reports of gunfire'?!"
Smoker and Saldeath both froze at the implications of those, and as one they said a word that had now officially been stated the one time it had ever been said in Impel Down.
"Invasion."
-o-
Fear was a foreign emotion to the blugori. They preyed on Sea Kings and guarded individuals who were as threatening, or even more so. Revolutionaries or pirates, Devil Fruit or not, it didn't matter: the blugori faced them all with silent violence and ironclad determination.
But even so, within the beasts, there remained one last instinctual fear in the face of the unknown. One example of such was anything that lacked a solid, powerful body yet showed significant sapience and/or power. Logias were rarely captured alive, after all. And when they were, they never spent a moment away from the equalizing touch of Seastone.
All of which only meant that an unfortunate blugori was left very scared when its attempts to move away from the hulking submarine that had breached their hunting hatch were foiled by something that pulled it back in. It felt something without a body sucking it into bottomless depths, its incredible strength useless for breaking free or damaging the mass.
Of course, there was also the fact that of the many hells in Impel Down, one environment that was not featured, that they could not have been prepared for…
"Kehihihihi! What a wonderful start!"
Was a swamp.
"Yeeeeees, my new pet, come to papa!" the swamp-man leered viciously, drawing in the ensnared primate further and further into his murky depths until its grasping fist vanished entirely. "Kehihihi! Oh, this job is turning out even better than I'd dreamed! Cross might have struck hard against Sabaody, but there's not a chance in hell he'll put Caribou Trafficking out of business! Especially not when we can just raid hell itself! Kehihihiiii! Would you not agree, Coribou?"
"Uh… uh-huh, uh-huh," a wall-eyed fatso nodded blearily as he wandered around nearby, a Gatling gun clutched in his arms. "Whatever you say, Brother Caribou, you're right, Brother…"
"OF COURSE I'M RIGHT, BROTHER!" Caribou cheered as he flung his sleeved arms out wide, his tongue lolling out. "FOR ONLY A GENIUS SUCH AS I COULD—!"
"Move your ass, you snot-nosed hitchhiker."
"GWAH!" Caribou yelped as he was shoved aside. Given his lanky build, this would not have been a surprising occurrence, were the shover not a four-foot woman with more wrinkles in her than a paperback novel.
"Honestly," the woman sneered, shoving her coke-bottle glasses up as she glared down at the indignant Logia. "Did we have to bring this pack of leeches along with us? We certainly have enough men of our own for this, you know!"
"Aye, maybe so," a larger man wearing overalls and goggles and toting a cubic hammer scoffed as he carelessly stepped over Caribou, a company of pirate foot soldiers spreading out behind them. "But you heard the deal, same as me: We only got the blueprints to this pit if we brought them with us. Besides, it's not like we'll be dealing with them much longer."
"Agreed," a blue giant—or rather, Wotan, the tip of his fin scratching against the airlock's ceiling—rumbled as he crawled out of the submarine, stooping so that he could fit. "So let's just get this over with: they'll do their job, we'll do ours, and then we leave, get our payment, and never speak to one another again. Agreed?"
"Fine by me, you washed-up wastrels," Caribou scoffed, pulling himself up by way of his brother so that he could properly glare at them. "Honestly, did nobody ever tell you that corpses belong in graves? Kehihihi…" He jerked his head at his brother. "My brother here could help you with that, couldn't you, Coribou?"
"Dig the grave, dig the grave…" Coribou slurred, unslinging a shovel from his back and planting its tip into the ground. Well, trying to because, you know, stone. "…can't dig, Caribou, can't dig."
"NOT NOW, YOU IDIOT!"
"Sorry, brother, sorry…"
"That's quite enough!"
Both parties turned their attention to the final person who'd emerged from their ride, the brothers with annoyance and the seniors with respect and concern. The individual was a diminutive old man, wearing a Viking helmet, with several plastic tubes running from his arms to the bag on his back, and he looked at them one and all with solemn determination.
"Our business here is far too important to risk over petty quarrelling! Kindly stow your attitudes, and let's get about it!"
While Caribou crossed his arms and mutinously looked away (and Coribou looked in the wrong direction entirely), the old woman took a tentative step towards the even older man, her arms raised placatingly. "Captain, please, remain on the ship. It's not safe for you here, and—!"
"Nothing doing, Nightin," the old man huffed as he shouldered his bag. "I know it's dangerous, and I know I could die, especially in my state. Why, odds are even good that I'll be an outright hindrance, but I'm afraid I don't have another choice. I wasn't there for him years ago; I have to be here for him now! So, I'm sorry, but this is how it is!"
He held his head high and marched past her and all his other crewmates, and glared down the passage that led into Impel Down.
"No matter what happens, no matter how much this hellish prison throws at me, I won't stop. Not until I save my brother! Or my name isn't Byojack World!"
-o-
Red in the face and visibly trembling with his blazing outrage, the diminutive master of the blugoris slammed his pitchfork against the floor and stalked for the door, Smoker silently following him after a sidelong glare from the midget.
"Issue the following order by my authority!" the devil-man barked.
The anger shown by the usually unflappable Saldeath had every guard listening intently.
"Unless or until you hear otherwise from Vice Warden Hannyabal or Warden Magellan, the escaped convict Buggy the Clown is not to be recaptured alive."
"SIR!"
"NOW MOBILIZE AND STOP THOSE INVADERS! MOVE!"
"SIR, YES, SIR!"
-o-
Buggy's head slowly peeked its way out of the fresh pile of stonework that had crashed down onto him, fearfully eyeing his surroundings. "…I'll shut up now."
Galdino, meanwhile, just stood in place crying miserably (and quite pathetically), his tears disappearing as quickly as they impacted the sand. "I'm surrounded by suicidal idiots…"
And as for Luffy? He was steaming, one hand dragging down his face and the other twitching in a desire to strangle the clown to death for hurting his chances to save Ace this much.
"And of course, things just got a lot more complicated…"