Sneeze, Rain, and Jojo find themselves still aboard the crew ship parked on the shore of Fillenem, As the sun is setting.
Rain interrupts a thick silence. "What's the score at right now?"
"It's go fish, there isn't a score."
"Well, how many times have you won then?"
"Like, five."
"And how many times has the monkey won?"
...
"Four..."
"Four times??"
"-teen"
"You're losing 5-14 against a monkey?"
"It's a smart monkey!! And his name's Jojo."
"Right, okay..." Rain leaned into the post of the ship mysteriously and nonchalantly.
Suddenly, a strange aura settled upon our protagonists. Something wasn't right. This feeling was short-lived, however. The attention was quickly brought to the line of forest only a short distance away from the shoreline. Slowly, the boys looked over the edge, regardless of nothing noticeable emerging yet. Suddenly, a roaring noise erupted, and a thick cannonball flew through out of the forest, its origin unknown. It soared through the air until making contact with the ship that the boys stood on, exploding with pieces of wood shrapnel everywhere and knocking the boys to their feet. Immediately, Sneeze and Rain assumed combative stances and leaped onto the sandy beach.
"Show yourself!" Sneeze shouted into the thick forest. In response, 3 more cannonballs erupted through the woods, just barely missing Rain and Sneeze's heads, but exploding onto the hull of the ship.
"Solar... FLARE!!" Sneeze shot a short beam of heat into the area where the cannonballs came from, setting a small explosion but not setting any trees on fire. Once the smoke had settled, they noticed a figure walking towards them.
"That's awfully dangerous, you know." The figure spoke, with a rough voice. "Forest fires are quite common."
"Why did you do that to our ship?" Sneeze shouted to the strange silhouette through the smoke.
"you shouldn't worry about that... It's just a ship, no?" The figure responded. "And I had to ensure that you don't have anything to run off with."
"What do you want?" Rain asked calmly.
"I am Typhon, Captain of the Typhon pirates. And I don't like seeing my competition running around if I have anything to do about it."
"You aren't our competition."
"As long as you sail a Jolly Roger on these seas, any pirate is your competition. That's the way it goes. Now prepare to mark the end of your story."
The figure called Typhon emerged from the smoke. It was a tall man dressed in odd robes, with dark red hair slicked back and hazy yellow eyes, one covered by a patch.
"I recognize you. You've got a bounty of 50 million on your head." Rain spoke softly.
"Then maybe, you'll recognize THIS!" Typhon plunged his hand into the dirt floor, and pulled it out with a large cube of the dirt attached to his hand, firmly stuck on his arm. Then, with his other hand, he supported the dirt block arm and aimed it towards sneeze. With a grin, Typhon horrifically turned pieces of the dirt into cannonball projectiles, firing at sneeze. Fragments of the dirt crumbled off, transforming into cannonballs already in motion.
"Oh, shit." Sneeze thought to himself. He managed to narrowly dodge out of the way of the first two shots, but the third grazed his arm.
Rain instantly leaped into action, leaving no more time for dialogue. "Crescent palace... 4 stars." He uttered. Suddenly, the area around the pirates turned much darker than before, with no visible sight of the forest, the ship, or anything other than the sand they stood on. Then, reaching into the inside of the pocket of his shirt, he materialized multiple throwing stars, shaped like crescent moons. Without a moment to lose, he threw them directly at their opponent, observing the odd transformation of their battlefield. Typhon raised his arm, still covered in the dirt cube, allowing the stars to stick into the block. Upon this, Rain spoke again.
"Set."
On the mark of his incantation, the moon-shaped throwing stars instantly exploded into a white blinding light, flash-banging Typhon who groaned and covered his face. The shadowy arena also vanished back into the normal setting.
Noticing his opportunity, Sneeze lifted his hands and shot a few balls of raw heat at Typhon, and charged him to close the distance. Rain did the same, and pulled out a strange staff from his mysterious garments. The balls of heat directly hit Typhon, and upon being knocked back with minor burns on his body, he proceeded to once again dig his arms into the soil beneath him, but when he pulled them out, his hands had been replaced with machete blades, both about 2 feet long. Sneeze with his daggers, and Rain with his staff, the duo exchanged hit after hit against their enemy, Typhon keeping his distance with expertly performed dodges to keep the pressure low. As they clashed steel, the duo began to notice the pattern in which Typhon would try to separate them with abnormal speed. However, before they could put this discovery to use, he stopped.
Sneeze took this moment. "Radiant BURN!"
Putting both of his hands together, he shot out a beam of raw heat like a laser. Underestimating the speed at which Sneeze could output his attack, Typhon dodged in too little time, resulting in his arm getting caught in the heat. However, Sneeze was also impacted by this burn, as his hands were scorched leaving him preoccupied. Typhon's dodge landed him right in front of Sneeze, and after a quickly timed leg sweep, he was on the ground. With no time wasted, Typhon raised a machete hand, glinting in the sunlight.
"Sneeze, no!" Rain shouted, too far away to make it to him in time.
Sneeze braced himself with his forearms as Typhon brought his blade down, tightly closing his eyes. However, even after impact, the pain never came to his senses. Confused, he looked up to see the machete clearly pressed against him, but his arms were out of the ordinary. They looked like someone had covered them with jet black paint.
Sneeze stared in shock at what his arms formed. "I-is that..."
"Armament hardening..." Typhon grunted angrily as his attack was halted by Sneeze's new ability.
Instantly, Sneeze rolled out from under his enemy and jumped back to his feet, and raised his arms.
"Sunrise combo." He spoke, as his arms turned into firey pillars over his hardened forearms. Then he proceeded to charge at Typhon, punch after punch to the face, not giving him the chance to recover the hits were not only more potent from the haki, but burning from the power of his fruit. Then, out of nowhere, Rain appears from behind the shadow that Typhon cast, delivering an absolutely devastating blow to the back of his head with the blunt end of his staff, knocking their opponent unconscious... and defeated.
For a moment, the duo stood there breathing heavily, looking at the damage they had done against the wildly difficult fight now finished. Burn marks across the face, an arm that was burnt to a moderate degree, and torn clothing from Rain's sharp armada of weapons that most likely cut flesh underneath. Then, they both slowly turned to the ship they stood on only 30 minutes ago, which was already 70% submerged underwater. Leaving them, AND the crew they arrived with, stranded on Fillenem island.
