Summit War 14: Natsu Appears

"Uchiha ... Natsu." Her voice was very soft, as if she were saying a foreign name that she didn't know well. There was no anger or surprise in her tone, only a very faint curiosity.

She toyed with the arrow between her fingers, her gaze shifting from Natsu to the Whitebeard behind him, and finally back to Natsu, as if evaluating data she had only seen in files before.

"That old man named Brook said that some unexpected people always appear on this sea," she murmured to herself, as if speaking to herself, then nocked the arrow again and drew the bow.

This time, there was more than one arrowhead on the bowstring.

Three arrows were simultaneously placed on the bowstring, each trailing a trajectory visible only to her. The three lines slowly extended in mid-air, locking onto the same target.

It's not Whitebeard. It's Natsu.

"I don't like your tone." Natsu's voice wasn't loud, but it was like an icy blade, coldly slicing through the noisy battlefield.

Hands have already begun Hand Seals, fingertips flying, afterimages lingering as new hand seals are added on top.

Purple lightning flickered around him, illuminating his expressionless face. His tone was as flat as stating a fact.

"Also, I don't like talking to people with my head up."

Before the words were even finished, the sky suddenly changed color.

An invisible force stirred the dark clouds above Marineford, and purple lightning surged wildly through the clouds like a swarm of snakes, intertwining and tearing at each other, eventually coalescing into a colossal Kirin beast formed from pure heavenly lightning.

It stood tall amidst the clouds, the lightning surrounding it turning the entire gloomy sky a dazzling bright purple. Its earth-shattering power made both sides in the chaotic battle below involuntarily gasp for breath.

"Lightning Release: Kirin!"

The moment the Kirin, formed from heavenly lightning, pounced on her, Gunko's brows finally furrowed.

Of course she knew she wouldn't die—the immortality bestowed upon her by Lord Imu had long since made her accustomed to using her body to withstand attacks that others would avoid at all costs, accustomed to being pierced, cut, and smashed, and then standing up as if nothing had happened.

But while they may not die, they are still in pain.

She did not hesitate.

The arrows at her fingertips shot out a split second before the Kirin crashed into her. The three materialized arrows, trailing semi-transparent trajectories, precisely embedded themselves in the broken wall of the fortress behind her. Her body was violently pulled backward by the force of the arrows, as if she had been forcibly ripped out of the center of the explosion by an invisible hand.

The Kirin crashed down where she had just been standing, lightning exploded, and the fortress's spire was blasted into dust, with rubble and arcs of electricity flying everywhere.

The Gunko landed on the roof of another fortress. Several charred marks were on her pure white cloak, and a small tuft of hair was singed by an electric arc. The stench of burnt protein filled her nostrils, causing her to unconsciously wrinkle her nose.

She looked down at her singed hair, a rare hint of annoyance in her eyes. When she looked up again, the gray-white figure had already disappeared over the Whitebeard's shoulder.

Immediately afterwards, a silvery-white spatial ripple silently bloomed less than three meters to her side.

Uchiha Natsu stepped out from the Flying Thunder God Technique's light, her Tang Saber already raised high, its blade wrapped in dark golden Chakra tail flames, sweeping towards her neck.

That strike was executed without any unnecessary movements; the angle was so precise that even her arrow had no time to retract and block.

Gunko instinctively tilted her head back and retreated, the blade grazing her throat and severing a few strands of her flowing hair.

She flung two arrows at Natsu's chest, but just before they touched his robes, they were deflected by a dark golden phantom of ribs—the skeleton of Susanoo flashed past Natsu, so fast it seemed like an illusion.

The two exchanged seven or eight blows atop the fortress in an instant, the sparks from the clashing arrows and blades flickering in the smoke.

The Gunko had to admit that the boy's swordsmanship was so cunning it was frustrating.

Natsu noticed a very interesting detail in the trajectory of her arrows—before they were launched, the arrows would always leave a very faint, semi-transparent trajectory line in the air, barely Sharingan.

Predicting the trajectory and then intercepting it with absolute speed—that's the principle he used when he cut off the arrow that attacked Whitebeard.

But this also means that if the opponent fires a sufficient number of arrows at the same time, even his fastest knife cannot stop them all.

The two retreated simultaneously, facing off atop two fortresses more than ten meters apart.

Gunko tilted his head and looked at him, suddenly finding this stern-faced kid rather interesting—not the kind of "interesting" that comes from admiring an opponent, but rather the kind of curiosity one feels when seeing a weapon they've never seen before and can't help but want to take it apart to see what's inside.

She pulled a few more arrows from her quiver and gently rubbed them between her fingertips, the translucent trails slowly extending through the air.

When Uchiha Natsu stood on Whitebeard's shoulder and severed the arrow imbued with Armament Haki with a single strike, the entire battlefield at Bayhead seemed to be paused.

The swords of the front-row Navy Soldier were still raised in mid-air, the gunners' fingers were frozen on the firing buttons, and even the officers who were fighting the pirates subconsciously glanced back.

"Void Demon Tamer - Uchiha Natsu!" Someone shouted this name out in a daze, and panic surged through the entire defensive line like an electric current.

The survivors of the West Blue War turned pale when they saw those scarlet Three-Tomoe Sharingan.

They still remembered how, outside Origin Island, this man had forced Admiral Kizaru back with a dark golden giant, and how he had crushed Celestial Dragons's head in the ruins of Sabaody.

The fifth Emperor of the Sea, with a bounty of four billion Beli, the monster known worldwide Godslayer, has finally appeared.

What unsettled the Navy Soldier even more was the woman standing on the Arrowhead Bird.

No one knew who she was, no one had ever seen her face, but the ancient longbow in her hand, the pure white cloak she wore that did not belong to any of the Navy's ranks, and the terrifying strength that allowed her to escape unscathed from Uchiha Natsu's Lightning Release, all silently proclaimed one fact—she was not a member of the Navy, yet she stood at the very heart of the battlefield.

"Who is that woman? Have you seen her?" Onigumo asked Doberman in a low voice, clutching his still-bleeding severed arm.

Doberman shook his head, his fingers never leaving the hilt of his knife, his gaze fixed on the two figures facing off in mid-air.

Not only them, but even Vice Admiral Tsuru, standing below the Execution Platform, frowned slightly, searching through all the files in his mind about the World Government's secret military forces, but he couldn't find any matching records.