"Looks like the welcoming committee just showed up."
In the next moment, Dante rose to his feet, the two men locking eyes with him.
The man in the yellow suit adjusted his sunglasses slightly and spoke in a tired, slow drawl, "Don't move. Or do. Honestly, either way, you're screwed."
Dante tilted his head with a smirk. "Wow, that's the most enthusiastic death threat I've gotten all week."
The yellow-suited man's brows rose ever so slightly in exaggerated surprise, though his expression somehow remained lethargic, making the reaction feel sarcastic.
The other man, the one with the cap and floral shirt, took a step forward. "Who are you?" he asked plainly, his rumbling voice almost shaking the ground itself.
Dante spread his arms wide, his grin stretching further. "Ah, finally, someone with manners. You folks look a bit more important than Miss Rainbow Chicken back there, so I'll give you the honor of an intro."
He cleared his throat theatrically, arms still outstretched.
"I am Dante Bond!" he declared. "Or as you might've heard…Lupin!"
Silence followed.
"Is he expecting an applause or something?" The yellow-suited man muttered to his peer who remained with an unfriendly expression.
To this, Dante's demeanour slowly started to deflate, only for him to lazily shrug and say, "Tough crowd. Guess I'm too ahead of my time," he muttered with a lazy smirk, raising his gun slightly. "Now, unless you two want matching spinal makeovers, I suggest you move."
He paused suddenly, eyes drifting upward toward the floor of the palace he had just leapt from. A heavy, suffocating pressure pulsed from above, making the air feel thick.
He blinked. "...That's probably my cue."
The colour bled from the world once more. Sound became distant, muffled like he was submerged underwater. His body began to glitch faintly, ready to vanish...
'Huh...'
But then he noticed something. He turned slightly.
The man in the yellow suit was gone.
He hadn't seen him move.
His eyes narrowed, skepticism in full bloom.
"Huh... that's not ominous at all." He glanced around, half-expecting a jump scare or dramatic entrance. "Swear, if this is the part where a giant foot comes down on me like a cartoon..."
Though skeptical, he knew he couldn't waste time now.
Without hesitation, he bolted forward...as well as anyone who was on ice could, feet pounding, or rather lightly thumping against the grass until he stood face-to-face with the red-shirted man.
He raised his golden gun and pulled the trigger.
BANG!!
Time snapped back to reality, a thunderous bang splitting the air.
But it wasn't just the sound of his gun.
A louder, deeper crack echoed a heartbeat later.
Dante's head whipped around, his eyes widening.
The man in the yellow suit now stood precisely where Dante had been a moment before, one foot planted deep into the ground.
The impact had shattered the earth beneath him like glass, spiderweb cracks fanning outward.
Dante stared, not at the destruction, but at the impossibility of the man's presence. He hadn't seen him move. Not even a blur.
'When did he get there?'
Before he could collect his next thought, a deep, gravelly voice broke the tension.
"Hey, Kizaru..."
Dante turned back toward the red-shirted man, the one he'd fired at, only to find a gaping hole of bubbling magma in the centre of his forehead.
It hissed and seethed for a brief second before beginning to close itself, the molten edges knitting together like clay.
"This brat just dodged you."
The wound sealed completely as if nothing had happened. The man glared with renewed intensity.
The yellow-suited man, Kizaru, raised his brows in mock surprise, his mouth forming an 'O' as he spoke in his signature sleepy tone.
"Oh my... that's a first. A kid who's just as fast as me... How troublesome."
Dante's breathing grew shallow as he looked between the two. He finally muttered with wide eyes, half to himself, half in disbelief, "You guys... you're just like that ice guy."
Akainu's eyes narrowed sharply, the comparison clearly striking a nerve. He let out a low grunt, volcanic heat beginning to simmer around him.
Perhaps it was the youth's aloof expression in their presence or his arrogance to stand before him after attempting to take him life, but something about Dante rubbed Akainu the wrong way.
At that moment, Akainu's arm began to drop with molten lava, collecting around his arm as it grew to the size of Dante's entire body.
As for the youth?
He saw it.
He saw the twitch in Akainu's muscles.
The intensified glare in his eyes as if he was preparing to kill.
The rigidness in his feet as he stabled his footing.
To this, Dante stepped back out of range of the attack before it came.
"Hmph...you dodged before I even moved. What is that? Haki?"
"What the hell is Haki?"
Dante raised an eyebrow, only for Akainu to continue swinging in the next second, this time his entire magma arm shooting forward, closing the distance.
However, with one more glitch of his body, Dante was gone.
From behind the crumbled palace wall, a faint exhale escaped the shadows.
"Dodging light and lava in ten seconds flat... Either I'm a genius, or everyone else is bad at their jobs," Dante muttered, exhaling behind the palace he had first emerged from as he dusted off his shoulder.
"Not Haki, I guess. Then could it be, a brat so young as yourself, somehow possessing something else that allowed you to do that? Talent? Trained Skill? Or possibly...experience."
Dante could hear it...the bubbling and accumulation of the magma as the voice was focused in his direction.
He widened his eyes as he shot from his feet, then...
BOOM!
The entire palace he hid behind exploded from within, a giant magma hand shooting past where Dante once was, melting the concrete of the palace and the very ground.
'How the hell did they figure out my location so quickly?'
Dante sprinted as the palace crumbled and fell toward where the two once were.
'Quickly, quickly...1...2...'
With this, his figure glitched, just in time as where he once was exploded in magma.
Now, he huffed as he scaled the falling castle, his speed growing slower as the atrophy of being on ice finally started to get to him.
But he didn't stop.
No, instead, he grinned as he leaped off the top of the castle, looming in the sky, over the two.
'Just two seconds...'
His mind worked so fast that he'd already formulated a plan.
Wait for an attack that would hopefully take more than two seconds to charge and get to him, then disappear into the mist as they gawked at the sky.
'Well...they did just notice me behind that castle but...we plan as we go!'
However, he paused as he witnessed Kizaru seemingly...disappear.
Little did he know, two seconds was nothing short of an eternity for his opponents.
'W-Whe...'
Perhaps it was instinct or the looming feeling of danger that made him raise his head, witnessing a familiar yellow-suited individual upside down, over him.
At least, that's what he assumed Kizaru's position to be like.
After all, all he could currently see was a foot less than an inch away from his face.
'Ah...I understand it now...it's speed. I saw the light. Damn...he was so fast to get to me yet I was able to take the time to look up and see his attack? This bastard mocking me, he wants me to see!'
As the attack was just about to hit him...
'Maybe this is a cartoon.'
BANG!!!
BOOM!!!
Dante's figure blurred as he shot into the ground with a BOOM, kicking up dust as the scene lay silent for a few seconds.
But soon, the dust cleared as Kizaru and Akainu stood over a jaw-dropping crater as the latter's foot, dripping with magma, sank into a bag of gold and jewels, melting it.
"Y-You're gonna regret that...both of you..."
Dante's voice rang out as he comfortably lay in the crater, his head drenched in blood and his body broken and mangled at some parts.
"Are we? Big talk for the one who's soon to meet his maker." Kizaru, his eyebrows raised, replied.
"Ha...hahahaha, what a joke. You call it death...I just call it a failed path. So go on...do it..."
The two men paused as they witnessed the youth, stare them straight in the eyes, seemingly straining himself just from talking as blood flooded from his lips.
But he didn't care.
And as they witnessed the craze in his eyes and the grin from ear to ear, their expressions couldn't help but stiffen.
"Kill me. But I promise you, soon, you won't know it, but I will. And I can't wait to see the looks on your faces."
Akainu raised his fist, dripping with magma as the youth spoke, and as the latter was done, no words were spoken as Akainu swung, engulfing the entire crater in a devastating BOOM!
All one could see was the boy's skin melt, bones following the same fate as he slowly began to disintegrate into nothingness.
Despite that, the grin remained as he stared down the two for as long as his eyes worked.
And whether it was audible or just a thought that failed to reach their ears, he spoke one last time.
"Run it back!"