Bang! Bang! Bang!
Gunfire, deep as thunder, exploded across the ice field.
The sound wasn't the sharp crack of gunpowder; it was more like the dull, monstrous throb of some colossal heart.
Two jet-black bullets burst from the muzzle.
They didn't spin instead, they flew like miniature bunker-busters, the keratin surface of each round writhing slightly as they tore through the air with a scalp-crawling shriek.
Kuzan stood motionless, hands in his pockets, not even lifting an eyelid.
As a Logia-type user of the Ice-Ice Fruit, physical attacks meant nothing to him.
Blades or bullets, without Haki, passed through his body like smoke.
Even with Haki, if he preemptively shifted to ice and split himself apart, the damage was avoided completely.
That was the confidence of an Admiral.
The composure of one who stood at the pinnacle of the world.
"Toys for children..."
He watched the two black rounds streak toward him, utterly unmoved.
He was already deciding which technique would entomb this red-clothed freak in ice.
But
The instant the bullets closed to within five meters of his brow, a nameless chill shot up his spine and slammed into his skull.
It felt like drowning.
As if some invisible force had sapped every ounce of strength from his body.
The frozen elements inside him suddenly lagged, sluggish and wrong.
"No!"
His lazy pupils shrank to needle points.
Observation Haki screamed danger; a red light of death flashed in his mind.
Do not take the hit!
Do not elementize and try to tank it!
Instinct moved faster than thought.
Kuzan, who had meant to let the bullets ghost through his head, shattered the ice beneath his feet at the last heartbeat.
"Soru"
The pinnacle of the Navy's Rokushiki movement arts.
He vanished, leaving only a crater of crushed ice.
Whssh!
The two bone bullets skimmed the afterimage he'd left behind.
Though they hadn't struck flesh, the terrifying kinetic force and some strange field still scoured his cheek.
Boom!!
The rounds plowed past where he'd stood and slammed into a towering iceberg behind him.
No fiery blast just raw kinetic release.
The fifty-meter mountain of ice looked as if an invisible titan had gouged out its center.
Countless shards whirled skyward.
A hole more than five meters across punched clean through, its edges laced with crimson-black viral filaments that gnawed at the surrounding frost.
Thirty meters away, Kuzan reappeared.
He was still crouched from landing, but cold sweat now dotted his brow.
A few severed black curls drifted past his cheek cut by the wind of the near-miss.
Had he been a tenth of a second slower… had he tried to elementize… his skull would now sport two neat, matching tunnels.
"Hoo..."
He straightened slowly, exhaling a plume of icy breath.
A finger brushed the thin line of blood on his cheek; the crimson on his fingertip changed his gaze completely.
Gone was the languid indifference.
In its place: a gravity he had never shown, laced with disbelief.
"This sensation..."
He lifted his head, locking onto the red figure blowing smoke from the muzzle.
"Sea Stone?"
Only Sea Stone could rob a Logia-type of power in an instant.
Only Sea Stone could bypass elemental intangibility and strike the true body.
But how?
The material clearly wasn't Sea Stone, and no Haki had coated it!
Recalling the creature's devouring trait, Kuzan felt a twinge of dread.
Even as he thought, bang-bang Deadpool squeezed the trigger again.
"Bingo! Right answer no prize though!"
Kuzan's head began to ache; he'd planned to kite this enemy at range, only to find himself the one being kited.
Behind the mask, Mordred tone was pure mockery.
These were no ordinary Desert Eagles.
The frames were laced with high-grade Sea Stone dust, giving the bone bullets the power to cripple Devil Fruit users an ultimate anti-ability slayer.
Watching Kuzan dodge again, Deadpool tilted his head, the white eyepieces narrowing to slits.
"Pretty quick reflexes, big guy."
"Come on, don't be shy have another!"
Before the words faded, bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!
Deadpool leveled both arms and fired without hesitation.
This time it wasn't two rounds, but a hurricane of full-auto fire.
Blacklight-viral muscle absorbed the Desert Eagle's brutal recoil.
The muzzle spat black-red tongues of flame.
A dozen Sea Stone-laced bone rounds wove a net of death over Kuzan.
Every bullet locked onto a kill-point: brow, throat, heart, groin each strike ruthless and dirty.
"What a pain..."
Kuzan's brows knitted.
Knowing what those bullets were, he would never let one touch him.
Faced with the storm, he could only Soru-step in rapid succession.
Whssh-whssh-whssh!
Across the ice field, he became a blur of afterimages.
Each flicker left a fresh crater blasted by a bullet.
The once-flat plain now looked lunar, pocked and ruined.
Whssh!
He reappeared a hundred meters away, bent slightly, panting.
His white suit bore scorch-edged holes where bullets had grazed.
Though none had punched flesh, every near-pass of Sea Stone radiation froze his elementization for an instant.
He hadn't danced on this knife-edge in years.
"Hoo..."
He exhaled frost, eyes dark.
Too passive.
As long as those rounds kept coming, he dared not elementize freely; even charging a big technique was perilous.
For the first time, Kuzan tasted the truth: the lagging get beaten.
In the distance, Deadpool blew away the smoke; the white eyepieces curved into a manic grin.
Instead of firing again, he twirled the bio-weapon pistols on his fingers and slapped them back into the hip holsters holsters grown from his own thigh-flesh.
"Hey, tall guy!"
He lifted a hand, pointing at the ragged Kuzan, his tone casual as if greeting an old pal.
"You've got skills ever think of jumping ship?"
Kuzan straightened, eyes narrowing behind his shades.
"Jumping ship?"
"Exactly switching sides!"
Deadpool spread his arms as though embracing the whole ice field.
"What's the fun of being an Admiral in this dump? Protecting cattle for slaughter?"
Kuzan stood amid the shattered plain, hands back in his pockets, but every trace of laziness had vanished.
He tilted his head toward the red freak, his gaze cold as ancient permafrost.
"Cattle?"
He echoed the word, his voice flat, his emotion unreadable.