Ch18: Man vs Frog

Caden for the last time checked if Kaeru moved somewhere. Looking around the corner, he saw him still standing and facing the port, with Ganero laying down in the same place as last time.

Getting back into the act of a drunk and beaten up pirate, he walks up to him.

"Boss our shipz ar on fyre!" He exclaimed, slurring his speech on purpose.

Hearing the voice, Kaeru looked back. "Oh, Mario was it? Come here and immediately tell me what happened!" He said with a forceful tone.

Walking up to him, Caden realized a few things.

'He doesn't know this Mario, so I could have a better chance of fooling him.' He thought optimistically.

Seeing him just standing there, he slapped Caden on the face before shouting once more. "Talk you idiot! Are you deaf?!"

'But, his squeaky voice will be the death of me.'

Getting himself together, he started speaking. "Yes boss, I was sleepin in my owm room, but woke up to some footstepz outside." He started, still trying to talk drunkenly.

"I looked out m door and sow some slaves and saylors waking around."

Kaeru nodded, realizing that it really were Ganero's men. He took a moment to kick the man again, before going back to listen to the rest.

"I trined to fihgt thym, but there were to many ofw themn. I wok up ant saw all of ourn shipz burnin throu tha window, so I run to yu bozs!" He finished and took a moment to appear too drunk to speak any more.

At the same moment, he saw the girls sneaking under the wall. They were doing a terrible job at trying to be stealthy, anyone could see them going one after the other if he just turned in their direction.

Kaeru nodded his head after hearing that. "Sure, now go to the port and help the others in putting out the fire."

As he said that, Caden got a bad feeling. 'Oh no, that's too fast, gotta distract him some more.' Looking at the girls, they were almost halfway to the exit.

Thinking of something, he saw the pirate turning around so he quickly caught him by the arm and shouted. "Wha aboud de oters? I saw thym lyin aroun!"

Kaeru resumed looking at him, but shouted back. "Are you disregarding my orders? Is your life too much for you?! Shut up and GO!"

At that moment, both of them heard a snap coming from the side.

Caden's heart dropped and Kaeru got startled. Both of them turned to the side and saw the girls.

One of the twins just stepped at a small branch and snapped it in half. All of them stopped at that moment.

Kaeru first managed to respond. "Well, well, well. What do we have here, some slaves are trying to sneak out I see."

The girls hearts also dropped, but Caden barely restrained himself from chuckling. Kaeru's voice really worked on him in the worst way.

"I didn't have any slaves running away since the day I started this whole operation." He said, cracking his knuckles. "For their escape, you will pay the full price."

Saying that, he got ready to run at them, but suddenly he heard a chuckle from behind him.

Sharply he looked back and found Caden being unable to stop laughing. "What's so funny?!" He shouted.

"O-oh, it's just that your voice is really cracking me up." Caden answered, with a massive grin on his face. Although he looked relaxed, his thoughts were entirely different.

'Dammit, why aren't they moving?! Do they want to get killed?!'

"What?! You filthy maggot! How dare you say that?!"

*chuckle*

"Oh man, please stop, I can't take you seriously when you talk." Said Caden, taking another at him.

Kaeru was surprisingly only a little taller than himself, with his eyes reaching the top of Caden's head.

Hearing that, he only got madder. "I see, then you will be the first to taste my new power!" He said, with each word being more squeaky.

Before Caden's eyes, Kaeru's body started changing.

From being a normal sized man, he got smaller and smaller, stopping at a height around Caden's knee.

Although he got smaller, he also got much wider. That's not even all of the changes. His skin turned mostly black, with his back being bright yellow.

He saw this much more clearly when Kaeru's shirt broke apart from being stretched too much.

"Behold, you lowly creature." Said the weirdly big frog in front of him.

"You're a frog?!"

"Yes, I am a- NO, I am not just a simple frog. I possess the mysterious power from a devil fruit." He said, his voice getting even worse. It still sounded squeaky, but now with the addition of coming from his throat, like he got something jagged in there.

"What can even a frog do? You are just smaller this way." Said Caden, throwing anything that comes to mind, while going mad from STILL seeing the girls standing in place.

Having enough of chatting, Kaeru jumped at him and struck him in the chest, knocking him back. Not stopping at that, he followed with another hit.

Caden managed to dodge. Looking up, he shouted at the girls to run. Hearing him, they stumbled a little but quickly got off and were sprinting to the gate.

"I see, so you are working with them! You filthy traitor! DIE!" Shouted Kaeru, attacking again.

What followed was an intense session of dodging or trying to parry Kaeru's jumps on Caden. The boy did his best to block attacks. He used his hands, feet, knees and mostly everything he could.

Although his proficiency in combat wasn't too high, he managed to stand on his feet. Some wounds and bruises were visible on his arms, but he ignored it in favor of keeping the frog away from the girls.

What helped was the fact that Kaeru was much more mad at him than the women.

Unfortunately, Caden didn't have any advantages in this conflict, he was much weaker than his opponent, slower and an overall bigger target. Trying to hit the frog turned out to be a nightmare.

'Ouch, I will need to work on that.' He thought, blocking another strike.

The scuffle went on and on. The girls were so slow that Caden was about to cry, but suddenly Kaeru stopped.

"How are you still standing?" He asked bewildered.

"What do you mean? I know I'm not the best fighter, but I don't think I'm that bad either." Answered Caden, taking a few breaths thanks to this opportunity.

"I'm not talking about your shit combat, how are you so unaffected?"

"By what?"

"My poison, what else?!" Shouted Kaeru. "Did you use some antidote?!"

"You are poisonous?!" Screamed terrified Caden, looking all over himself.

The areas around his legs and arms where they weren't covered showed grotesque blue lines going all over them.

'WTF, is my slime working against it? But how!' He thought, but Kaeru didn't give him any more time.

Throwing himself towards Caden, Kaeru started attacking again, but this time aiming for vital points.

The dodging continued, with each strike making Caden more mad.

'Fuck, why can't they leave already! I want to strike him with my slime so bad, but I can't show my power here! Dammit!'

Kaeru managed to strike him heavily on the cheek, throwing him to the side.

"Give up you idiot, you have no chance of winning against a better life form like myself." Proclaimed Kaeru, although you could hear his breathing starting to be heavier.

'Fuck, I don't care anymore.' Thought Caden, starting to form some slime in his hand.

Seeing Kaeru getting closer and ready to attack, he took a deep breath. Slowly exhaling, Caden got ready to land a first solid blow.

Looking intensely, he dodged a few more hits and redirected others. With every attack, he managed to understand more about his attacker.

How fast does he go, at what angles does he jump, how much force to expect and so on. Trying to predict Kaeru's attacks worked wonders for Caden. From being unable to land a hit, now he could counter every so often. He had to yet use his slime, since he intended to end it in one hit. After all, he has to make it look like he just punched harder and not used some magical power that could put him on a World Government list of dangerous people.

To minimize these chances, he even made the slime mimic his skin in color, just to make it less noticeable.

After two more strikes, Caden saw the opportunity.

Kaeru was starting to lose his mind, with the kid in front of him somehow being able to withstand his poison.

That's freaky, since he tested it on a Sea King a few days ago and it managed to kill it after around 50 minutes. That might seem slow for a fight, but take into consideration that the beast was also 50 times bigger than Caden. He should have been laying dead on the ground since a while ago!

As he thought about it, Kaeru started being more reckless in his attacks, ignoring technique for more power.

Jumping again, he didn't manage to align himself correctly while in the air, causing him to be flying with his stomach in the front.

Caden took this chance and struck him. He especially focused all the slime on the top of his fist to maximize the damage.

The strike landed and what Kaeru felt in that moment, was as if a cannon ball hit him at full force. His innards were moved to the sides, his stomach collapsed on itself. All the air left his lungs, making him look like a bow drawn to its limit, only without a string holding the arrow.

The result of that punch was the frog abruptly flying backwards.

Kaeru flew above the ground and struck the wall of the mansion, making a frog sized imprint and having some bricks fall down around him.

He slowly peeled off of the wall, falling down right beside Ganero, who just got covered with some bricks.

Looking closer, Caden saw that Kaeru stopped moving.

Finally, he stopped holding his breath. The fight ended and he emerged victorious.

"Uff, good thing he didn't know how to change into the hybrid form, otherwise I would be dead." He muttered, making sure to be too quiet for anybody to hear him.

Just as he was going to check if the frog died, he heard some shouting from behind. "Yes! You did it!"

Looking back, he found all the girls running up to him.

"Why are you still here?!" He asked bewildered.

"We were just about to leave, but right then you landed that amazing hit!" Hearing that, he fastly absorbed the slime residues on his fist. Fortunately, the girls didn't notice that. They were too focused on his victory.

He got some congratulations and other compliments. Hearing all that made him lose his focus and relax a bit.

Unfortunately, that wasn't a good decision.

In the next moment, Caden felt the world slow down a bit. In the back of his head he felt something different. Somehow, he could feel more than before. Concentrating a bit more, he understood that he felt his surroundings, but before he got to explore this feeling more, he felt something moving at high speed.

He quickly understood that this was a bullet and it wouldn't hit him, since its trajectory was going beside him, but he realized that's not good. The bullet would hit at least one of the girls, as they were standing in its way.

Having no time to move them, he shifted to the side.

The girls saw that he suddenly moved sideways, but at the same time they also heard a gunshot.

Caden stumbled a bit. 

Fortunately, he moved so that he would be shot to the side of his stomach.

'Better to have a hole in the stomach than in the head.'

When he stabilized himself and stood back upright, with left hand covering the wound, he looked back.

Kaeru managed to crawl towards Ganero and took his gun. Although he aimed at Caden, his hand was still that of a frog and shaky at that, so he missed.

Seeing his target still get hit made him a little happy, but when he saw him also taking out a gun, Kaeru started dragging himself back to the mansion.

Hoping that all these hours spent with Bellemere shooting different guns will help him, he took aim at the back of the fleeing frog and took a shot.

The bullet flew at a high speed, slicing through the air and hitting its target. It went into his back and left through the shoulder, making a complete hole in the frog's body.

Looking at him, Caden saw as Kaeru slowly transformed back into his human form. The wound didn't disappear, instead it got a bit bigger. Blood slowly started to flow from it.

*sigh*

"I hope it's over now." Slowly muttered Caden, hoping he hadn't jinxed himself again.

"Oh my god, Mister you got shot!" Shouted little blue girl, looking at him slowly bleeding.

"Don't worry about it now, we need to move. These gunshots were too loud, pirates probably heard it all the way to the port."

The women realized what danger they are in again.

In the next few minutes they managed to leave the mansion's premises and hid at the side of the road in a bush.

Hearing rapid footsteps, they saw as pirates ran back from the port.

Caden counted them all and even saw Mabar.

As the group passed, their small group emerged from the bushes and quickly went down the road. They had to slow down, as Caden couldn't run too fast with his wounds, especially the last one.

While moving they also heard the pirates curse at Mabar. They probably thought that Kaeru fought with Ganero. That's a good thing, since it will occupy them for a while, giving time for their small group to escape.

A few moments later, they managed to reach the port. Most ships were still on fire, a few got extinguished but still had broken in half masts and totally burned sails.

They walked to the side and reached the small ship that Forland and the rest left for Caden.

Getting on it, the girls didn't know much about operating it, but fortunately the brown hair knew something about sailing.

Caden sat down and saw how they managed to set sail.

Slowly they left the port and moved further into the sea. Looking back, he managed to see the pirates waving at them and shooting in their direction, but they got too far for normal bullets to reach them.

At last, his stay on this island ended.

It definitely felt much longer than it should have.

~2501 words