One Piece: Dream of Immortality

Chapter 378: Thunder Dome



"It may not be wise to wait here, Luffy," Jinbe advised.

"I'm staying right here until Sanji comes back!" Luffy insisted stubbornly, just as Jinbe expected he would.

"Very well then, captain," Jinbe agreed, sitting himself down next to Luffy.

"Don't give up so easily, Jinbe! We're bound to be found here by Big Mom's crew and the longer we wait here, the more preparations they can make to deal with us!" Nami panicked. "Then we will fight," Jinbe spoke as if it were that simple.

"You can't fight the whole of Big Mom's crew with just the two of you!" Nami reasoned.

"There's three of us," Luffy pointed out.

"You...! I...! Grrrrrr!!!" Nami growled and ruffled her own hair in frustration.

How could she deny it when he so earnestly included her as an equal?! Worse, while she was certainly not a match for these two, she did have some confidence in her capabilities.

"Damn it, you better not let them lay a single finger on me!" Nami drew her Clima-Tact and got to work.

Jinbe and Luffy watched her curiously.

They were already out in the open, so there was no need to try to hide their relative location. So instead she would hide their exact location.

A thick fog began to form around them, giving them a good 50 meters in each direction of sight, but blocking off all sight for a wide stretch beyond that. In only a few minutes, the fog covered nearly the entirety of the field in a great dome of obscurement.

"Now for the tricky part..." Nami huffed, already building up a sweat.

Jinbe and Luffy watched her in awe as the weather, at least inside of this field, was slowly wrested from Big Mom's control.

...

The fog dome was naturally spotted by the war party assembled by Big Mom's children to take revenge for Cracker's defeat.

"What are they up to?" Mont-d'Or wondered aloud.

"It doesn't matter. We just have to capture them," Amande spoke calmly.

Soon enough they were just outside the dense fog. It looked at though you may be able to cut it with a knife from how thick and still it was.

"Homies! Get in there, find Straw Hat, and report back here!" Mont-d'Or ordered. There was no need to test an unknown like this with their own bodies.

A few dozen chess guards gave war cries and charged into the fog. From the moment they did so to the moment they could no longer be seen, they became increasingly quiet until all sound from them stopped.

"What is this...?" Mont-d'Or didn't have a good feeling about this.

Granted, the chess homies weren't very strong so it wouldn't actually be concerning for them to get beaten. In fact, it was all but guaranteed for them to lose some to someone who could beat the weakest of their three sweet generals.

No, what concerned him was the lack of information. A surprise attack from someone as strong as the people they were dealing with could easily take one of their real powerhouses out of the fight.

After a minute or so, a single chess homie appeared at the edge of how far they could see into the fog.

"Report!" Mont-d'Or barked, expecting it would be difficult for the homie to hear him.

"The fog is empty!" The chess homie's shout could barely be heard.

"Empty?" Mont-d'Or was confused. "Did they make this thing to cover their escape and distract us?"

Amande frowned and lit a cigarette. "Something is off here."

Mont-d'Or understood what she meant as soon as she said it. A suspicion had been tickling the back of his mind from the moment the chess homie reappeared.

Why was the homie alone if there is no one inside to harm them? Why did he stop at the edge of their sight, especially when it was so hard to hear one another from that spot? Why was the homie STILL standing right there?

"Come over here!" Mont-d'Or shouted an order.

"I can't! Something is stopping me!" The chess homie put up his hands as if to press them against some invisible barrier.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

"A trap meant to stall for time?" Mont-d'Or conjectured.

Amande had a different approach than her brother's idle speculation. She drew her sword and slashed at the chess homie.

The flying slash carved into the foggy dome and split the chess homie in twain before it could react. However, its two pieces did not fall to the ground, but rather faded into nothing like a

mirage.

The fog itself seemed hardly affected by the slash, but for the split second it took for it to collapse back into place, they heard something. The roar of hurricane winds and a powerful gust washed over them, before it all returned to eerie silence.

Broken chunks of chess homies were scattered on the ground in front of Amande, trailing back into the fog.

A vein bulged and pulsed on Mont-d'Or's forehead. "They're taking us for fools!"

"What fine control..." Amande admired genuinely.

Big Mom was capable of producing weather of great power and breadth, but her small scale control paled in comparison to what they were seeing right now.

"Can you open a path through it with your World of Books?" Charlotte Galette asked him. She was an angry looking woman with arrowhead-like horns, shoulder length red hair, and wearing a short cocktail dress and a feathery coat.

"Not through wind like that; my pages will just be blown this way and that way." Mont-d'Or lamented.

"We should spread out and try to disrupt it with a combined assault," Charlotte Opera said. He was a large man who seemed to be made of cream.

That seemed as good an idea as any when faced with this strange weather phenomenon. Pirates, no matter how powerful, knew to respect the dangers of the weather and treat it with

all due caution.

...

Nami listened to the Charlotte family talking outside of her fog storm, carrying their voices on the wind towards the center where she, Jinbe, and Luffy waited quietly. "Hmph, typical meat heads. I'm not sure if the brute force they can produce will be enough to break through, boys, so prepare yourselves." Nami warned, already shifting tacts.

Jinbe and Luffy grunted their understanding, getting ready for a proper fight.

As Nami twirled her Clima-Tact, there was a subtle shift in the air, the hair on the back of her neck standing up as the ambient electrical energy started to rise.

Rumblings could be heard on the inside of the dome, but the outside was as quiet as ever as the Charlotte family spread out a bit to be sure their attacks wouldn't affect each other. Nami kept a delicate balance within the dome, keeping it on the edge of a shift for precisely

the right moment.

"""NOW!!!""" Nami and the Charlotte family called out in unison.

Simultaneously, the Charlotte children used their most appropriate moves for breaking apart

the unseen wall of wind.

Nami allowed their attacks to flow inwards, driving the force of her own withdrawal of the dome at ground level. At the same time, she curled to wind up and over the head of the small

army.

The light colored fog darkened in but a moment to near black, revealing an ominous

thundercloud, lightning racing along its underside.

"""Huh?!"""The Charlotte siblings were surprised.

"Thunder Rain Tempo!" Nami cried out, dragging her Clima-Tact down against a surprising

amount of resistance.

The shadowy atmosphere created by the dark cloud was replaced with blinding light and

deafening thunder.

True to Nami's words, lightning fell like rain upon their heads.