Escalation

"You...I recognize you...you're the Blasphemous Wings, Vahn Mason..." remarked King, his voice deep and masculine as he narrowed his dark red, visibly glistening eyes.

"So they call me," responded Vahn, punctuating his words by manifesting and spreading his seven sets of wings, his dark brown hair turning white, and his eyes turning gold with glowing, white, x-shaped pupils.

"Why are you attacking us? Wasn't your enemy the World Government...?" asked King, flapping his expansive, webbed, pteranodon wings to remain airborne, contrasting Vahn, who appeared suspended in place, unaffected by gravity.

"To be more accurate, the World Government is an enemy of this world as a whole..." countered Vahn. "As for why I'm attacking you...consider what your people have done to the citizens of this land. I am the consequence for those who have forgotten them..."

"Hmm...!?"

Seeing Vahn raise his left hand, King preemptively beat his wings and dodged to the side, narrowly evading the golden laser discharged from the former's left index finger.

"That was Kizaru's attack...!" exclaimed King, the flames on his back and wings allowing him to spontaneously accelerate toward Vahn, producing several cone-shaped shockwaves that expanded from the tip of his long and very sharp pteranodon beak.

'He's fast...' noted Vahn, shifting backward and furling his seven sets of wings to form a barrier. By fortifying his beak with Armament Haki, King increased its durability and penetrative power considerably. However, as he didn't have time to build up speed and momentum, he only managed to pierce half of Vahn's wings while pushing him back several tens of meters.

Unfurling his wings with considerable force, Vahn propelled King away, causing the man's pupils to shrink to the size of pinholes as he revealed six brightly glowing finger pistols, his form resembling that of an Asura as he spread luminous golden flower petals through the air and unleashed a barrage of lasers.

'Damn...just what is this guy? A new model of Pacifista...?' King asked himself, crossing his arms defensively in front of him as Vahn's lasers were too fast and sporadic for him to dodge. They were, however, much weaker than Kizaru's, causing them to explode into fiery golden plumes on contact rather than piercing through him.

Just as King was considering breaking through Vahn's flurry of attacks, a sense that something was amiss washed over him as a bunch of muscular brown hands and arms sprouted from various parts of his more than six-meter tall and exceptionally muscular body, courtesy of Robin's emulated Hana Hana no Mi. Instead of attempting to grasp him, however, the hands produced destructive spheres of golden Ki that promptly exploded around him, resulting in several golden plumes that merged into a sun-like sphere more than fifty meters across.

'It's a shame these aren't powers I developed and honed myself, but I'm gradually making them my own...' thought Vahn, a faint smile adorning his face even as King, looking a little worse for wear but not too injured, burst forth from the fiery golden plume with an oversized katana in hand, aimed at his throat. The blade alone was nearly three meters long with a cross-section thicker than his wrist, but it looked like an average-sized katana in the 613cm-tall King's hand.

Reacting quickly, Vahn materialized his Legendary Spear, holding the end of its shaft with his right hand and guiding the blade with his left to parry King's diagonally slashing attack to his right. In the same movement, the two of them slammed into each other with their shoulders, really putting into perspective how much bigger the man was than him as Vahn noticed he was around the same size as King's arm.

Exhibiting that his wings weren't just for show or to enable his flight, King channeled Armament Haki through them and thrust the flight feathers of his rightmost wing at those on the left side of Vahn's, ostensibly intending to slice through them. To his surprise, Vahn simply allowed all of his wings to scatter into pale golden light as he spun around the man's shoulder and launched a quick but heavy kick at where the man's wing was attached to his body.

'He's gotten stronger...' noted King, grimacing as he created distance from Vahn and found the latter veiled in a hazy golden aura with a monkey-like tail swaying behind him.

Feeling excitement swell within him as a result of his Saiyan physiology, the smile on Vahn's face broadened as he pulled back his hands to the right side of his body, shouting, "Ka-me-ha-me—" as a bright sphere of extremely dense golden Ki accumulated between his palms.

Beating his wings and expelling fire from their backs like afterburners, King charged toward Vahn while swinging his sword, coated in black, orange, and crimson flames, in a broad, sweeping arc. Vahn was a little taken aback by the sudden increase in his speed, but instead of feeling panicked, his eyelids tensed before he abruptly disappeared.

Slashing through where Vahn had been, King created a blade-thin wave of crimson energy that expanded outward with extreme speed, giving the impression it should slice through anything in its wake. Unfortunately, all it struck was empty air as Vahn reappeared a short distance behind him, his hands thrusting forward as he bellowed, "HAAAAAAA—!" while unleashing the Ki he had amassed as a momentous beam attack.

Half-turning his body and reinforcing his left wing with as much Haki as he could muster, King used it like a shield to try and endure Vahn's attack. The beam splintered around him like a high-pressure stream of liquid, but while most of the force was scattered, pain radiated through his wing as a luminous golden patch became more noticeable from behind its cover.

Realizing that trying to endure the beam hadn't been the correct decision, King clenched his teeth, swallowed his pride, and permitted it to push him back with incredible momentum. This significantly reduced its penetrative power, and though he was forced back nearly two kilometers, he was able to break free just before his wing was drilled through completely.

Not affording King even a moment to recover or build momentum, Vahn crashed into him as pure photons without any force behind them, making it appear that he had leaped from the interior of the man's leather-bound body before surprising him with two point-blank Ki blasts.

"I will not be defeated...!" shouted King, his eyes full of fury as he ignored the pain radiating throughout his body and unleashed a flurry of blindingly swift slashes that ignited the air with their momentum. Were he not 613cm tall, with a sword more than twice the length of his body, Vahn might have had trouble evading such an attack. Instead, he was comparable to a leaf in the wind, weaving and flowing around the white-hot blade with room to spare. There was a moment when he lost a third of his tail, but it promptly grew back from a spurt of golden flames.

Seeing Vahn regenerate despite being cut with a Haki-infused blade, King ceased his frenzied combo and drew back several meters, panting heavily as he noted, "That's the ability of Marco the Phoenix...just how many Devil Fruit abilities have you copied...?"

'Oh, I never even considered that the Phenex Clan's regeneration would be correlated to Marco's Devil Fruit...' mused Vahn, the smile on his face briefly becoming more prominent before he remembered his purpose, his expression turning serious as he asked, "How does it feel? And this is just a taste of the helplessness you've caused the people of Wano..."

"You understand nothing..." countered King, getting his breathing under control as he asserted, "This world is rotten to the core. The only way to usher in a new era is to develop a military force strong enough to utterly overwhelm those responsible for its rot..."

Fueled by his incredulity, Vahn couldn't help adopting an expression of unbridled fury as he questioned, "Are you retarded? This nation has been closed for hundreds of years and had come under the stewardship of an honorable and powerful man who not only knew the location of Laugh Tale but how to reach it. The Beast Pirates could have worked with the people of Wano to develop an even more powerful military force through cooperation, but what did you do? The same exact shit you condemn the Celestial Dragons for..."

'What is this...?' King asked himself, feeling a sense of uneasiness from the very core of his being as the space around him appeared to solidify before trembling in response to Vahn's fury. The impression it gave was similar to Conqueror's Haki, but instead of exerting his will destructively like a conqueror, it was as if the world supported his outrage...

Recalling Vahn's comment about the World Government being the enemy of the world itself, a terrifying possibility materialized in King's mind, along with a growing urge to retreat. If his suspicions were correct, Vahn wasn't an opponent he could defeat.

"Planning to run...?" asked Vahn, narrowing his eyes as he asked, "Even though you prohibit the people of Wano from escaping to even hope for happiness elsewhere?"

"I harbor no grudge or enmity toward the people of Wano..." contended King, slowly backing away as he added, "My enemy has and always will be the World Government. If they're your enemy as well, you will only be aiding them by eliminating us..."

"Really? Because I don't see them here..." remarked Vahn, gliding forward at the same pace King retreated, his expression hardening as he asserted, "The means matter, King...you cannot decry others as rotten or tyrannical and simultaneously excuse your own as justified by an end that isn't even in sight! The way to make the world a better place is by being better! You don't get to play the victim while willfully victimizing or turning a blind eye to the suffering of millions...!"

Clenching his teeth and fists, King wanted to refute Vahn's words, but he knew better than most how the Beast Pirates had abused and exploited the people of Wano. Much of this mistreatment could be accredited to the reigning Shogun, Orochi, but they were the ones who had placed him into the position and, for the past eighteen years, enabled his rule...

BOOM

Interrupting Vahn's pressuring of King, a loud explosion rippled through the air, along with bands of black, crimson-hued lightning scattering from the direction of the colossal, skull-shaped fortress, colloquially known as Onigashima.

'Oh, wow...he looks a lot bigger in person...' thought Vahn, referring to the nearly three-kilometer-long Long-style dragon barreling toward him with azure-blue scales covering its back, a yellowish underbelly, shadow-black fur lining the ridge of its back and head, similarly black, several-hundred-meter-long whiskers, orange flames wreathing its five-clawed forelimbs, and two sets of horns, a larger set curved like the horns of a bull and the other resembling two-pronged antlers. Notably, there was also a large, x-shaped scar on his underbelly.

"So, the Blasphemous Wings has come to Wano! Let's see what you can do, boy...!" bellowed the dragon, Kaido, punctuating his exclamation with a fiery orange breath attack more than twenty meters wide, resembling a column of pure destruction with startling momentum. King hastily moved out of the way as if his life depended on it, but Vahn held his position, his expression a mask of calm and focus as he extended his left hand toward the almost solid mass of flames.

Though he initially tried to direct the flames to flow around him, borrowing the Phenex Clan's ability to manipulate flames, Vahn quickly realized that the Haki infused within the attack, which was essentially willpower mixed with spirit energy, made them exceedingly resistant to manipulation. That said, resistant did not mean impervious...

As his hand ignited with golden flames, Vahn produced a powerful suction that drew in Kaido's flames like a black hole. The momentum of the attack pushed him back, but when it inevitably abated, he was left floating in the air, completely uninjured and grinning. This left even the monstrous Kaido at a brief loss, his yellow-tinted eyes observing Vahn with a mix of caution and intrigue as the latter spread his arms, unfurled his Saiyan tail, and let golden flames rise from his body, derived from Ace's Mera Mera no Mi, a Logia-Type Devil Fruit that allowed its consumer to become, produce, and manipulate flames...

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