"If you could travel, where would you want to go?"
Romantic words on the surface, but for anyone fighting Kuma, it was no simple question. In the original story, that line left Luffy with quite the psychological shadow.
And now the one hearing it was Charles, who planned to take Kuma away by force.
Charles arched his upper body backward on the spot. With his excellent dynamic vision, Kuma's arm movement looked as if someone had hit slow motion.
In that instant, Charles also saw the paw pads on Kuma's palms.
The Paw-Paw Fruit, a Devil Fruit the Celestial Dragons had put up as a "hunt prize" in the God Valley incident. Kuma, then the prey, ate it first and, using his newly gained power, saved more than five hundred people.
The paw pads on Kuma's hands were the expression of that power, whose essence was the ability to repel everything.
Charles had no intention of testing with his own body a power that could even act on concepts.
He pivoted, tracing an arc back to upright—just as Kuma's other hand came down.
Boom! Crack!
Two sounds rang in sequence, the first from Kuma's blow landing.
The second… The two had been standing on the yardarm that held the sail off the enormous mast behind the manor.
When Kuma's palm struck, a paw-shaped dent appeared in the yardarm, and the cracking sound was the nearly ten-meter-diameter spar snapping.
The massive spar fell, dragging its thick chains with it. The commotion drew the attention of Moria and the Straw Hats fighting below.
Moria ground his teeth in fury. Whether Kuma or Charles—both were too much. Fight if you must, but why tear apart his ship!
He couldn't afford to offend either fighter, so he vented his anger on the Straw Hats.
Luffy and the others had no time to wonder why Charles was here; they had to go all out against Moria's onslaught.
In midair, wreathed in flaring flames, Charles closed on Kuma and lashed out a Fire Dragon's Talon kick at his body.
With a dull thud, Kuma didn't budge an inch. Blocking Charles's shin was that paw-padded palm.
Charles hadn't held back. Even a Marine battleship could be capsized by a kick like that.
But Kuma took it so easily, as if the blow had no force at all.
As the attacker, Charles felt the oddity even more clearly. At the instant of contact with Kuma's palm, there was no sense of impact whatsoever.
The reason was that Kuma had repelled the applied force with his ability. In a sense, Kuma's power was a kind of absolute defense.
"Pressure Cannon!"
Kuma slapped out again, and the air was repelled from his paw pads like a shell, blasting toward Charles.
Charles shot upward, and a massive paw-shaped void opened in the mist behind him.
Kuma didn't let the opportunity pass. Spreading his legs, he thrust both palms in a sumo-like shove, firing a rain of air cannons.
Flame wings beat behind Charles as he carved a fiery arc around Kuma, throwing the air shells behind him.
Kuma's face was unreadable as ever, but in one instant he abruptly withdrew his forward palm and slapped backward instead.
He vanished from where he'd stood and reappeared at Charles's flank, palm raised without mercy.
Kuma bore Charles no ill will, so the slap wasn't meant to hurt him—just to bat him far away.
Unfortunately, the World Government's orders still weighed on him; otherwise, upon learning Charles's purpose, he would have fled outright.
Kuma's thoughts strayed for barely a second before he had to focus again.
Charles had caught his wrist, and the hand would not come down. He hadn't eaten a "rebound fruit," but the Paw-Paw Fruit—only the pads on his palms could wield the power.
Charles heaved with his arm, and with no leverage in midair, Kuma had no way to resist. He was hurled away.
He fell like a meteor. He was just about to repel the air to check his descent when Charles streaked in with a flying kick.
Kuma barely had time to coat his chest in Armament Haki where the kick landed, but even so he seemed to hear embedded mechanical components shatter inside him.
Accelerated again, he crashed solidly into the ground, flipping an entire section of forest below.
Charles followed close, fire wrapping his arm as he drove a punch down.
Bursting through the smoke, Charles saw Kuma already on his feet, blood on his brow, both hands curved to encircle the air—warping it into the shape of a paw between his palms.
"Bear Paw Impact!"
As Charles closed, the paw-shaped air mass instantly expanded and slammed into him. It felt like smashing headlong into a steel wall while sprinting at full tilt.
But then surprise flickered in Kuma's eyes. Charles had taken the Bear Paw Impact head-on—and hadn't been blasted away.
Of course not. Even if it were a wall of steel, Charles could burn through it.
Flames erupted from his punching fist, sweeping aside the force hammering his body.
He used the opening to close and drove in a flurry of blows without mercy.
Kuma swung his arms, intercepting each strike in turn.
Both the force of the fists and the flames riding them were cleanly repelled by Kuma—so thoroughly that Charles couldn't break his guard for a time.
By nature gentle, Kuma was no great attacker, nothing like a "Tyrant." But in defense, he was second to few.
After who knew how many clashes, a confident smile appeared on Charles's face.
All those probes had finally revealed a flaw in Kuma's ability.
This is a world where physics is often mocked by Devil Fruits, but certain laws still hold.
Elasticity is the most basic of physics lessons; Charles hadn't forgotten.
He'd found that Kuma's power took a process to take effect. The paw pad deformed on contact with an external force, then, as it returned to shape, completely repelled that force.
Which meant the instant after the pad deformed and before it began to recover was a gap in Kuma's defense.
Even knowing that, few could seize that tiny window. Unfortunately for Kuma, Charles had seen a technique that could.
Edelweiss's Shining Sword—Twin Wings. Charles now could copy it completely.
He focused so completely his eyes turned to slitted pupils. As another punch sank Kuma's pad, Charles's arm-flames flickered.
In that split second, his arm completed the retract-and-fire motion. Kuma's extended arm—and half his body—was yanked back, leaving him wide open.
"Flame Dragon King's Crushing Fist!"
Charles stepped in and drove his fist hard into Kuma.
Surging flames carried Kuma away and smashed him full-bore into Thriller Bark's giant mast, snapping it in half.
The falling mast crashed onto the corpse of Oars, the giant demon housing Luffy's shadow, nearly knocking the shadow loose.
Unlucky Moria suffered yet another disaster for nothing!
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