Davy Back Fight (Part 2)

The race course is a short two mile obstacle course. Starting with a five hundred meter dash, there is then a climbing wall, followed by a zipline then an army crawl. At the end of the army crawl, there are 40 row boats, only enough for half of the eighty contestants. The row boats had to be rowed across a hundred meter lake, then the runners had to plant their pirate flag into a small mountain.

Rex keeps his eyes locked on Foxy the whole time, knowing that some of his shenanigans would surely follow.

Then, Rex realizes something. The lights that are illuminating the race course, slowly change color, going from a bright white into a rosy pink.

'That cheating bastard!' Rex thinks, before retrieving one of the many mirrors he had prepared for this exact purpose.

Looking at the two hundred meter distance between himself and Wire, Rex shook his head. He would not be able to make that shot. Then he turns to Gem.

"Gem, I need you to throw this mirror, the moment Foxy says ready, such that it flies right over Wire's head. Can you make the shot?"

"Of course, I can make the shot." Gem proudly snorts, before frowning. "But why should I?"

"I've got a bad feeling that Foxy's gonna wear the drapes of deceit, just do it and you'll see."

Gem squinted his eyes under his sunglasses but took the mirror.

"Ready. Set. Go!" Foxy cries out, Rex notices that he makes his signature fox hand move at the 'ready'.

However, a small object comes flying through the air like a shuriken, zipping over Wire's head just as the almost indistinguishable pink beam is aimed at him.

The beam bounces off the mirror harmlessly with Wire and Foxy's candidate running out of the starting line. The rest of the candidates seem to be stuck in slow motion as they barely take a step a second.

Foxy frowns, seeing Wire avoiding his Noro Noro beam, but quickly grins. There was no way Wire could beat his candidate, who had raced this exact course a dozen times.

"First-a place, Foxy Pirates!" Foxy cries out, as, surely enough, Wire is outpaced by Foxy's candidate who knew all the shortcuts.

But that doesn't hold Wire for long, with him coming in only seconds later.

"Second-a place, King Pirates!"

After those two, there is a short gap before the third place, a fishman from the Big Fish Pirates. Then, a sizeable gap opens between them and the rest.

Eventually, the top 40 are decided and the game is over.

"The-a Foxy pirates choose to-a steal Pickles, from the-a sloth pirates!"

The sloth pirate captain grimaces, seeing his first mate being stolen from under him, but could do nothing. A Davy Back oath was a pirate's reputation. He would just have to beat Foxy in the fights to come.

"The King Pirates choose Bella, from the Forest Pirates." Rex says, choosing the strongest female pirate from a losing group. She was an attractive, twenty something girl with green hair and a thin waist. From what Rex had heard, she was pretty strong, warranting her bounty of four million berries.

The Forest pirate captain, who had a profound crush on Bella, slammed his hand into his armrest, but didn't speak up. Bella just looked at Rex curiously, wondering about the mysterious King pirates who had risen to fame despite only being a month or so old.

The other pirate's choices don't surprise anyone and soon, the deciding is almost over. However, when the head of the 30th place group speaks, Rex cannot help but freeze.

"Tina, the head of the Black Cage Pirates chooses Jingo head of the Jingo Pirates."

The crowd is in shock at this. While one could choose a captain in a Davy Back fight, this practice was rarely done. After all, unless the first captain was much stronger than the subordinate captain, they could risk a mutiny. No captain liked to be subjugated.

A litany of chatter is sparked but is quickly quelled as the next pirate groups chose their steals.

Meanwhile, Rex stares at the so-called 'Tina'. It was no doubt Hina in a mediocre disguise, but Rex only wondered why she was here.

Were the marines trying to capture all the major pirate captains in the South Blue? If they were, they had better have brought a fleet of ships, or else it was just a pipe dream.

Little did Rex know, Hina's thoughts were exactly the same, with her being terrified that one of these pirates would discover her identity and kill her.

Gion had told her this was some rookie's debut and there would probably be only five pirate groups at most. With eighty here, Hina felt that even if she brought five times more men, she would still be outgunned.

Hina had already called Gion for backup, but Gion was being briefed on the Jacket D. Hoodie robbery all the way over in Roshwan so it would take a while for her to arrive. Hina knew she had to stall, but at the same time, she needed to arrest as many pirate captains as possible.

"OK! Time-a for the next-a game!"

Afterwards, Foxy began initiating various rigged games.

There was a boat race where everyone got the 'same boat' and had to run a river rapid course. That was designed to hit a pirate group known as the Carpenter pirates whose helmsman was so used to driving the top-quality ship that his crew had made that he failed miserably with Foxy's poor quality ship.

Wanting a shipwright badly, Rex had given his contestant some of Gem's blood, which he used to 'mysteriously' blow up Foxy's ship. Foxy had searched all the candidates for weapons, so he had no idea how that had happened, but the end result was Rex coming in first and Foxy sliding in at tenth.

Rex then took Gina, a female shipwright that was originally in the Foxy pirates of canon.

The next challenges were simpler. There was sniper shoot-off, targeted at the Sword Pirates, where Gem got a decent placing. Then, a weightlifting contest, targeted at the Princess Pirates, where Rex used Kid to cheat, a climbing wall, targeted at the Tubby Pirates, an eating contest targeted at Stick-Thin Pirates, won by Bonney, and more.

Each one resulted in Rex recruiting female crew members one after another. People looked at him weirdly for selectively choosing girls, but in the end, it was his right. He had gotten a female navigator, swordsman, chef, shipwright, doctor, martial artist and a musician. Rex's grin spread from ear to ear at the end.

"NOW! For the eighth-a Davy Back a-game! A sword-a challenge!" Foxy screamed out. "In this a challenge, you will have to carve out as many-a words as you-a can in this-a sturdy obsidian-a rock!"

Rex grinned broadly at this. It was great that he hadn't used Killer yet because this challenge was almost definitely targeted at the big Fish Pirates who had no swordsmen.

Rex looks at Kid, indicating that he had to weaken Foxy's candidate. While Rex was confident that Killer could beat anyone else, Foxy's candidate would almost certainly cheat, so Kid had to make sure that couldn't happen.

Killer then jumps up to the stage, his look solemn.

"Begin!"

Killer starts carving, one sword starting at the end, the other starting at the beginning. With this carving style it was almost impossible to read Killer's carving till the end making Rex curious.

Foxy's candidate obviously had much weaker rock, as he was able to cut into it with no strength whatsoever.

However, with Kid stopping him, the strength of the rock didn't matter, by the time the timer ended, he had only carved a single letter.

F.

Knowing Foxy, Rex supposed he had told his candidate to carve something along the lines of 'Foxy is the best', but only got an 'F' before it was all over.

Meanwhile, Killer's message is revealed.

'The Oath of Three Brothers.

One to be the strongest sword, another to be the strongest man and the third to be the jacket king.

King Pirates, represent."

Rex sees that even Kid has a small tear in his eye at this, before he quickly pulls it back in.

"King-a Pirates, who do you-a steal?" Foxy says through gritted teeth, having lost his chance at Big Pan.

"Big Pan of the Big Fish Pirates!"

The whole crowd goes silent at this. For a pirate, with a slightly above average bounty to steal the strongest captain here, what were the King Pirates thinking.

Then again, the King Pirates had proven that they were anything but normal. Killer, who was just their second mate, was just as good a swordsman as several captains with bounties above ten million Berries. How strong would their first mate and Captain be.

Big Pan looks at Rex with an odd look, wondering how this tiny, squishy human who he could pick his teeth with planned to subjugate him.

Still, the picking goes on. Hina picks her eighth pirate captain, but the crowd was already numb to this. Meanwhile, the Sword Pirates steal back their crew member that was taken by Foxy grinning at his misfortune.

Foxy clenched his fist, now he was down two of the ten crewmen he wanted to end this tournament with, he would have to come up with a trick to get them back.

"The next-a two games-a will-a be changed! Now-a, we will enter a tournament-a styled fighting. Any pirate a-crew with more than-a six of their original-a members will send their captain-a and their first-a mate onto the stage. Then, there will be a series-a of tournament fights, with-a each fight costing the loser a teammate."

Foxy grinned at his genius plan. Only sixteen or so crews met the requirement, and of them, Foxy wanted members from five. He would rig the placings so he and his lieutenant could face all five of them and steal a member each.

Rex just smiled, this was great for him too. Now, instead of getting away with seven female crewmembers, he could get out with fifteen, granted that he won all five matches and Kid only lost to him in the semifinals.

Rex hops up to the arena happily, waiting for the battle to start.

"King-a pirates captain Rex, against the-a Lady-a pirates, captain Shelly!"

Rex couldn't believe his luck. While he understood Foxy was likely pitting him against Shelly because of her hatred of men who took advantage of female crewmen, she was number one on Rex's 'to-get' list.

Meanwhile, Shelly looks at Rex with a menacing glare. She had watched him steal beautiful girl after beautiful girl and felt that if she didn't save them all, he would do unspeakable things to them.

"I make an eight-woman bet! My remaining seven crewmates and myself for Captain Rex and all seven of the women he's stolen!"

The crowd pauses at this. While betting crewmen like this was possible, it was a risky process as if Shelly lost, her entire crew would essentially belong to Rex.

Rex only grins. "If you want to hand me your crew, then I can only say thank you!"

"For your lustful acts, there is only one punishment, death!" Shelly growls at him, before jumping onto the arena, grabbing her signature double-bladed glaive.

Rex walks up calmly to the arena, feeling no tricks were needed to beat someone with a fifteen million Berry bounty. In truth, Rex's current strength was only slightly inferior to Luffy's when he beat Arlong, placing him in the ballpark of mid twenty million bounties on strength alone.

On top of that, Rex had already equipped with Killer secretly before coming down, so his current strength was in the upper echelon of all South Blue pirates. Drawing his dual blades, Rex stares at Shelly.

"Aprez-vous."

The fight begins with the clanging of Rex's blades and Shelly's glaive.

Almost immediately, Shelly is thrown backwards, with Rex's enhanced strength being far more than she could handle. Killer alone would be a decent match for Shelly, though he may lose. Rex and Killer together was just over kill.

Shelly is quickly forced on the defensive, raising her glaive up to block attacks, but it's all meaningless as Rex's enhanced strength ruthlessly falls down on her.

Soon, Shelly's famed double glaive begins to crack loudly, causing Shelly to pale. Using this as a distraction, Rex knees the female pirate in the stomach, sending weak, but effective Hasshoken ripples into her internal organs.

Shelly falls onto her hands and knee, vomiting, and Rex's blade land on her neck.

"Looks like princesses are going out of style. Fret not, now you'll be the King's maid."

Foxy squints his eyes at this scene. Rex was stronger than he imagined. Even he wasn't a hundred percent sure if he could beat him without his devil fruit.

Of course, with his devil fruit, Foxy felt that Rex would be easy prey, not knowing Rex had prepared for it.

Hina, on the arena floor looks at Rex with a piercing gaze. She too had noted his 'buying' habits, but to her knowledge, he didn't mistreat his female crewmates. Still, to see his strength, Hina felt an urgency to get even stronger growing in her heart.

The next few fights are nothing to be amazed by. Kid was slated to fight the Lady Pirates' first mate, but with Shelly's bet, they no longer met the requirements for the tournament.

Kid grumbles about an easy win, but he returns to Rex's sight, watching the next few fights.

Foxy fights Big Pan, who was technically still captain of the Big Fish pirates, but through some trickery, Foxy manages to beat him. He is disappointed as there is no one worth taking from the crew, as Big Pan 'belonged' to Rex, so he just picks a decent fishman karate expert.

Other than Foxy, Rex is surprised by how much Hina has grown in the past weeks. After learning about the betting system, Hina bets all her crew to steal all the crew of a decently famous pirate group.

Rex can see a few black iron attacks that seem to come from nowhere, indicating that Hina had gotten her famous devil fruit. She finishes the fight by finally revealing her devil fruit power, causing the crowd to 'oo' and 'ah' in excitement.

Other than those fights, the others are lame, with them dragging on multiple minutes and ending with both opponents seriously injured. Then, the final fight begins.

"We have-a Mr. Wax newly appointed first mate from the Joro Pirates against Lazi the captain of the Sloth Pirates."

Rex looks at 'Mr. Wax' scrutinizingly, before realizing that he is the future Mr. 3, Galdino from Baroque Works.

Based off the name, Rex assumes that Galdino had eaten his devil fruit and surely enough, after a brief scuffle, a sea of wax engulfs Lazi, trapping him.

Knowing he would have to fight Galdino soon, Rex excuses himself quickly before switching Killer out for Heat for the fire breath.

Then, as Rex returns, a few people notice his change in build, but no one is too concerned, and the fights begin.

With two devil fruit users plus Foxy being a potential third, the Davy Back Fight had really started to get interesting.