Moria felt the same helplessness he felt back then when he faced against Kaido, the one that made him stop training....he thought he had gotten better....
He was still a fraud.
Maybe defeat wasn't so bad.....his internal organs were a mess and even if he somehow won this, he would need Hogback to operate on him for at least a month before he would be back to normal, as every single one of his organs was damaged beyond repair, he didn't even know how his ass was still alive right now.
His pupils would reappear..no, he would not lose again.
Moria decided to fuck it, we ball.
Using all of the shadows he had left, all 5 thousand shadows.
"SHADOW'S TYRANT!!!"
A giant shadow would form behind him.
A fusion of 5k shadows, one last-ditch effort, a move that once used, his ass would have to gather the shadows once more.
"If you're so strong then take this!" Moria yelled, pouring his all into it, his all, his fucking soul into this shit.
Luffy would look at it, the giant fist rushing toward him...if that shit hit him, he would die, no ifs nor buts about it.
However, this also meant that if he destroyed it, Moria would be left with no way of escaping.
"Good."
He crouched—
Core compressing to the absolute limit.
"Come here."
The fists came down—
He rushed toward it, compressing his muscles to their fucking limits.
{Gum-Gum Heaven Piercer}
Luffy's fist would make contact with Moria's shadow, and as they clashed—
Everything inside the room would be destroyed, the whole upper half of the castle just gone.
"DIE MUGIWARA!" Moria was not going to lose this, he poured everything into it.
The two forces collided—
For a moment—
They were equal.
Then—
CRACK.
The shadow construct began to fracture.
Luffy pushed forward.
More pressure.
More force.
More compression.
Then—
BOOOOOOOOM!!!
The clash broke.
Luffy won.
His fist tore straight through the shadow construct and slammed into Moria with catastrophic force.
Moria's eyes went wide as every single shadow inside his body exploded outward—
All 5,000 shadows forcefully ejected.
"—WHAT THE—!!"
CRASH!!!
He was sent flying, his body broken, his power gone.
At that exact moment—
Luffy's Gear 4 ran out.
The steam vanished.
His body deflated mid-motion.
And—
THUD.
He slammed head-first into the ground.
Knocked out cold.
Silence.
Then—
Moria's broken body twitched as he weakly began to crawl away.
His breathing was ragged.
His body was destroyed.
He had nothing left.
And behind him—
"Heheheh... ahhahahah..."
Laughter.
Moria froze.
Slowly—
He turned his head.
Luffy was still on the ground.
Unconscious.
But laughing.
That same insane, carefree laughter echoed through the ruined battlefield.
Moria's face went pale.
This... this was not normal.
From the Merry, Nami, Sanji, Robin, and Franky saw it.
In the sky, it was pitch darkness, yet that darkness seemed to be fighting something.
"Is that Luffy?" Nami, with her Observation Haki, had seen it first. If Usopp wasn't inside working on something, he would have seen it first.
Chopper would look but couldn't tell, the darkness felt like it was made with thousands of souls.
It was like 5,000 wills clashing against one.
Then...the shockwaves hit them.
"HAAAA!" Chopper screamed as the wind blew him away, Robin creating arms to catch him.
"That's one hell of a blow," Franky said. He wasn't affected as much, he was close to a wall. That much power from so far—if they were closer, they would probably get crushed by it.
"What kind of monster is he fighting?" Sanji's brow furrowed. That shit was genuinely above his pay grade, granted he doesn't get paid but still.
The whole sky shook.
Meanwhile.
Kairo would look at Zoro, who was bleeding buckets. He had already told the sword god to do something else while Zoro got healed.
"If only I had access to the tech in the village," Kairo would think to himself, he wouldn't have to resort to such drastic measures. He had bandaged Zoro, the guy was alive, Kairo had done his job as a surgeon, which was to stitch Zoro back.
The rest would have to be done by Chopper.
Though, he couldn't help but feel uneasy.
'That drum... where else have I heard it before?' Kairo's brow furrowed, the sound of that drum was familiar to him.
Across two lifetimes—
The sound of a drum could be heard.
For Kairo, he had heard that sound before, for crying out loud, his going-all-out state had his heartbeat beat to that same rhythm.
And the ceremony to officially become a ninja or the leader of the clan followed that same beat.
His clan called it the Drum of Liberation, something to do with the fact that if one could use the Voice of All Things and the Drum of Liberation on someone that was Domi Reversi, they would return back to normal.
Yes, the beat was that strong.
Though, for Kairo to be hearing it right now must mean—
'Shit. Luffy.'
A/N...Can't say I pulled this out of nowhere, i foreshadow that shit since Drum island, then Alasbata, every arc following that, I kept foreshadowing it, with Luffy from time to time acting more destructive and so on.