"You filthy piece of trash!"
"I am... GOD!!"
Suddenly, Enel's furious, sky-rending roar shattered the air.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
In an instant, a blinding torrent of lightning erupted, blowing the mochi-fied structures into absolute smithereens. The blast triggered a hurricane-force shockwave, sending a dense volley of jagged stone debris rocketing outward.
Katakuri leaped back, planting his feet firmly on the ruined earth. Feeling the sheer force of the gale, he reflexively raised a hand to shield his face, tracking the center of the blast through the gaps of his fingers. Suddenly, his pupils contracted, his gaze locking dead ahead. "What is that...?"
Emerging from the desolate, scarred crater was a towering, three-meter-tall entity. The figure was clad in brilliant blue armor shaped like a mythical Tengu, crackling with volatile arcs of dense electricity. In its grip, it balanced a spear forged from pure, raw lightning.
Two Hundred Million Volts: Takemikazuchi!!!
He compressed his wild, erratic lightning to its absolute limits, drawing it inward to forge a wearable suit of armor... Katakuri lowered his gaze, his face darkening as he sized up the majestic, intimidating form standing before him. For the first time in a long time, a profound sensation of lethal crisis gripped his chest.
"Worm! I will tear you apart!"
The awe-inspiring entity took a heavy step forward, pointing the lance of pure plasma directly at Katakuri. Its voice echoed with a muffled, booming resonance.
"Interesting."
Katakuri slowly tilted his head down. Beneath the thick folds of his white tattered scarf, his lips pulled back into a grim, bloodthirsty smile.
"If you think you can do it, then step up! God of Thunder, Enel!!!"
The moment the words left his lips, the earth around Katakuri's feet began to liquify, reshaping into a shifting, yellowish-white ocean of dough. Waves of pure mochi rose dozens of meters into the air, surging forward with crushing momentum.
Mochi-Mochi Fruit Awakening, Flowing Mochi!!!
"A Paramecia Awakening...? What a tedious, boring trick!"
Enel tilted his head. With a sudden flex of his body, he propelled himself forward like a railgun bolt. The ground fractured beneath his heels as he tore through the air, leaving nothing but an atmospheric vacuum and a trail of residual static.
SPLAT!
In a fraction of a second, the towering wave of flowing mochi was punched completely through by a streak of light, leaving a massive, hollow ring charred to a crisp by the extreme voltage.
"Too fast!"
Katakuri's eyes flashed with a dangerous crimson light. But just as he moved to reposition, a devastating impact crashed into the right side of his face.
BANG!
A shockwave of compressed air rippled outward. Hit with the force of a meteor, Katakuri was sent hurtling sideways through the air, leaving a jagged, broken trail of blood spraying from his lips.
Yet, Katakuri was a veteran of a thousand battles. Even while mid-air, his mind cleared instantly. Forcing his core to twist against the momentum, he channeled all his weight into a brutal downward punch.
BOOM!
The earth shuddered. A stray arc of lightning hissed right beneath Katakuri's knuckles as his fist shattered the ground, cratering the earth several meters deep and kicking up a violent shroud of dust.
Skidding to a halt, Katakuri didn't even have a split second to breathe before he unleashed a vicious, blind horizontal sweep to his left. His leg split into dozens of independent tendrils, every single one coated in dense, jet-black Armament Haki.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
An eight-story tower shaped like a giant dessert was completely pulverized by the sweeping kick, exploding into a rain of flying debris and churning up a massive cloud of dust.
"Far too slow...!"
As if breaking through the constraints of space itself, Enel materialized directly behind Katakuri's back. The three-meter-long lightning spear in his hand flared with a blinding light as he lunged forward, thrusting the tip straight toward Katakuri's spine.
In that microsecond, Katakuri sensed the lethal threat from behind. Reshaping his physical form into flowing mochi, he opened a massive, hollow cavity in his upper torso, letting the true lightning spear pass harmlessly through the gap to impale the bedrock below.
BOOM!
The ground detonated instantly, fracturing the surrounding landscape as a devastating burst of electricity tore through the radius, enveloping everything in a cage of plasma.
"Ngh...!"
Katakuri rapidly dissolved his lower half into a puddle of mochi, sliding along the surface of the earth to escape the perimeter. Yet even with his evasion, the residual electrical discharge caught him, forcing a muffled groan from his throat.
Dashing dozens of meters away, the puddle of flowing dough coalesced back into his imposing human form, though his left arm was heavily scorched and blackened.
Seeing his calculated ambush miss its mark, Enel let out an annoyed, clicked tongue. With a violent pull, he wrenched the lightning spear free from the cratered earth.
His movement speed is simply too high. I barely have enough time to process the futures I see... And even when I do perceive them, my physical reactions can barely keep pace with his velocity! Katakuri's expression was incredibly dark, finding the situation exceptionally thorny.
The last time he had felt this helpless against raw velocity was during his rare encounters with Marine Admiral Kizaru, Borsalino.
It was the exact same brand of absolute, unapproachable speed, a speed that rendered the precognitive advantages of his Future Sight vastly less effective.
Worse yet, the man was a walking disaster zone, constantly radiating an intense field of electricity. He was a literal human hedgehog; every physical exchange required Katakuri to expend massive amounts of high-tier Armament Haki just to keep the high-voltage currents from frying his insides.
Furthermore, his Mochi-Mochi Fruit held a fundamental structural weakness against the Rumble-Rumble Fruit. Mochi was, by nature, entirely vulnerable to high temperatures, the extreme heat of Enel's lightning would instantly bake his dough into charred, brittle carbon or disintegrate it into ash!
I have to maintain my distance! Katakuri calculated inwardly.
"Unstoppable Donuts!!!"
With a low grunt, a translucent, glossy fluid enveloped Katakuri's hands. Simultaneously, the ground behind him liquefied, rising into the sky to mold into two massive, floating, yellowish-white rings.
"The hell is that?"
Enel stared up at the two floating rings, completely baffled by the bizarre technique. His face contorted with growing irritation as he barked, "Hey! You bastard! Take this damn fight seriously!"
With a roar, Enel lunged forward, turning into a flash of lightning that bridged the gap in an instant, thrusting his blinding spear straight toward Katakuri's chest.
"It has been decades since anyone has cleanly landed a blow on me—"
A cold, murderous intent flickered within Katakuri's crimson eyes as he bellowed, "Power Mochi!!!"
In that exact moment, a spectacular spectacle unfolded. From the centers of the two floating donuts, two massive, square-shaped arms constructed of dense mochi shot forth, their massive fists completely clad in a metallic coat of blue-black Armament Haki.
Katakuri threw a punch into the empty air. Right on cue, the giant arm emerging from the right donut extended at breakneck speed, its massive fist colliding squarely with Enel's incoming lightning lance.
BOOM!
Rumble, rumble—
The atmosphere buckled violently under the pressure. A visible ring of white shockwave energy, laced with millions of erratic electrical currents, detonated outward. A terrifying, turbulent gale tore across the landscape, scraping across the heavens and ripping up the earth.
The ground groaned and splintered inch by inch, the sheer air pressure shaving off a thick layer of topsoil for a hundred meters around them, erasing the ruins to create a flat, barren wasteland.
"Dammit! He blocked me from all the way over there?!"
Seeing the massive, detached arm emerging from the floating donut stop his charge cold, Enel instantly realized the mechanical trap of the technique.
Katakuri wasted no words. He threw his left fist forward, prompting the massive arm from the left donut to extend with a deafening crack. Caught off guard while overextended, Enel took the massive fist squarely in the chest.
BOOM!
A fierce cone of compressed air blasted out from the point of impact. Enel was sent rocketing backward, breaking through consecutive rings of sonic booms as he smashed directly into a pile of structural debris dozens of meters away. The immense kinetic energy caused the entire sector to tremble violently, sending a massive wall of dust billowing toward the heavens.
Moments later, amid the shifting rubble, Enel stood up, completely unbothered by the impact. He took slow, measured steps out of the jagged crater, his armor humming with static.
"It didn't do a thing, huh..."
Katakuri's eyes narrowed into a solemn stare as he examined the blue armor of lightning. There wasn't a single crack on its surface; his brow furrowed deeply.
It appeared that the defensive capabilities of this condensed armor of electricity were far, far higher than his initial estimates.