First Clash with a Devil Fruit User

Lynx emerged slowly from the passage.

His paws touched down first, his weight settling onto them before he lifted his hind feet. Every step was silent. The air inside the iron cage grew thick as he entered, as though something invisible had followed him out of the darkness and settled on everyone's chest.

The stands erupted the moment he appeared, then fell eerily quiet when he stopped in the center of the cage. The gamblers weren't afraid of him. They were waiting for him to strike. Everyone in Iron Cage City knew Lynx's routine. He never spoke, roared, or put on a show. He came in, killed, and went back. Nineteen matches, nineteen opponents. Not one had left the cage alive.

Jack watched him.

Lynx was smaller than Jack, but every muscle in his body was drawn tight, like a steel wire twisted to its limit. He crouched low, his weight balanced between his feet and his back arched into a dangerous curve. It was a feline's stance before a pounce—not something taught in human martial arts, but an instinct written into his genes.

The Arena Master rose on the second floor and tapped the railing with his short whip.

"Fight."

The cage door had long since shut. The instant the word fell, the gamblers in the stands burst back to life. Some shouted "Executioner," others yelled "Kill him," and still others hammered on the iron railings. Their voices blended into one droning roar.

Lynx moved.

He was so fast Jack's eyes almost couldn't track him. He darted along a diagonal zigzag, tapping his left foot against the ground to spring right, then his right foot to spring left. After three or four changes of direction, his path became impossible to predict. He was a gray-brown shadow streaking around the cage.

The first strike came from behind Jack's left shoulder.

Jack's Observation Haki had not awakened yet, but he could feel the shift in the air. Lynx's claws slashed down from behind his left shoulder. The instant their tips touched his Hardened Skin, Jack instinctively leaned forward to bleed off the force.

Screech.

The claws scraped across his Hardened Skin with an ear-piercing sound, like nails dragged over a steel plate. The friction of metal-hard claws against skin sent a peculiar vibration through him. The tips tore through his prison uniform and left four parallel white marks on his skin. A thin trace of blood seeped from their edges, beading on the hardened surface without running down.

Fast, sure, but that barely hurt.

Jack touched the wound and turned to find Lynx.

"Is that all the strength you've got? Didn't eat?" he taunted.

Lynx retreated the instant he struck, leaping back to the other side of the cage. He crouched before the wire mesh, his pupils narrowed to vertical slits in the dark. His breathing was so light it was almost silent, and his chest barely moved, nothing like someone who had just launched a full-force pounce.

A Zoan user had far more stamina than an ordinary person. An explosive burst like that was only a warm-up for him.

Lynx acted as if he hadn't heard Jack. The taunt was too obvious to work.

The stands exploded into noise again. Gamblers shouted the Executioner's name. Someone in a second-floor box stood and slapped the railing, scattering cigar ash everywhere.

The second pounce came from slightly right of center. This time Lynx didn't zigzag. He charged straight in, sprang up two steps from Jack, twisted in midair, and slashed diagonally down with his right claw.

His target was Jack's neck.

Jack raised his left arm to block. The claws left four deeper white marks on the Hardened Skin of his forearm. This time, their tips dug half a millimeter in. More blood welled up than before, a few drops running down his arm before the bleeding stopped. The impact made his body sway slightly, but his feet didn't move.

Lynx landed, sprang away, and returned to the other side of the cage.

His brow furrowed. He could feel it: the resistance against his claws was wrong every time they hit. They weren't sinking into soft muscle. They were scraping against something harder, like stone.

A third pounce. A fourth. A fifth.

Lynx grew faster and faster. He bounced between the cage's four corners, changing his angle each time: high left, low right, straight from behind, toward the ribs. His claws left white marks all over Jack, some deeper than others, but not one truly cut through his Hardened Skin. Blood seeped from more than a dozen wounds and stained Jack's prison uniform red, yet every cut was shallow. None even reached the dermis.

Jack was getting frustrated too. Why were both opponents I'd faced so damn quick?

He didn't follow Lynx's eyes, claws, or body. He followed his rhythm. A feline attacked in a pattern: pounce, strike, leap away, circle, pounce again. The rhythm wasn't fixed, but the intervals shifted with fatigue and the opponent's reactions.

From the sixth pounce onward, Jack stopped taking hits passively. He began turning sideways as Lynx leaped, shifting the claws away from vital spots. His left shoulder became his left arm, the back of his neck became his back, and his waist became his hip. Each adjustment reduced the damage and brought Lynx closer to his counterattack.

Then Jack punched with his other hand. He missed, but every punch forced Lynx to watch out for the next one.

That was exactly what Jack wanted. I can keep missing. But if I land just one, you're in for a world of hurt.

The intervals between Lynx's pounces shrank. Five seconds became three, then two. He was testing the limit of Jack's reactions, trying to force an opening with a relentless flurry.

But Jack gave him none.

The eighth pounce came.

This time, Lynx reached for one claw strike too many.

On the previous seven, he had retreated after one hit, never lingering in one spot for more than half a second. But after the eighth strike landed, he didn't spring away at once. His right claw drew back a fraction of a second too slowly. He wanted another slash, one that would cut through the back of Jack's neck.

He landed behind Jack and pulled back his right claw. His left was already raised for the follow-up.

Jack turned.

He wasn't turning to follow Lynx's movement. He had judged where Lynx would land the moment Lynx jumped. Jack stepped half a pace to the right with his left foot, used the momentum to twist, and lined his right shoulder up with Lynx's landing spot.

Lynx's pupils widened sharply.

His left claw was still in the air, and his weight was still shifting backward when Jack's fist slammed into him.

The punch struck his jaw.

It carried tremendous force. A dull thud sounded on impact as Jack's muscles tightened like steel bars beneath his hardened skin, driving all the force into his fist. Lynx's jawbone split down the middle. It wasn't dislocated—it had cracked clean through, the fracture running from the tip of his chin to the base of his ear.

The crack rang through the cage, cutting through the uproar in the stands. Gamblers in the front rows heard it. Some gasped; others dropped their betting slips.

Lynx's body pitched backward. Blood poured from his mouth, mixed with broken teeth. His pupils expanded from slits into circles, a feline's instinctive response to terrible pain. It wasn't an attack posture. It was fear.

Jack gave him no chance to land. He reached down with both hands and seized Lynx by the ankles.

"Got you, kitty."