Billy and Monty II: Electric Boogaloo

The man at the front who was practically talking down to Kouen had made the first initiative, in a considerable dash made against Kouen and before he knew it, a hard fist connected to the marine's stomach as it slightly pushed him back, looking like he was hurt at first but after the two seconds of the hit being landed, he just let out a chuckle with the puncher showing a surprised look. "You hit like a bitch." Kouen mocked, before the criminal would be met with a deadly throat jab by Kouen which caused the criminal to struggle breathing, making himself walk back from Kouen as the other three started to step in.

Before they stepped any closer though, Kouen used his stance to prepare himself for the incoming wave. The first henchman that came showed a decent amount of skill with the cutlass, making his fair share of horizontal and vertical slashes that forced Kouen to step back and dodge each slash, nearly being grazed by one slash in particular. The henchman got cocky however and dashed forward with the sword in-front, attempting to make a deadly piercing through the marines stomach only for the marine himself to get grazed on his side, but to quickly grab ahold of the man's grip on the sword, with Kouen quickly twisting the man's hand, cracking his wrist and forcing the man to drop the sword from the pain, to which Kouen picked up

They noticed that he seemed to be pretty well trained in close-up combat, and with that display from earlier and the way he managed to disarm their fellow subordinate, it seems they got the idea that they were out of their league. "Look... I think we got on the wrong foot here." one of the criminals started with to break the silence, typical. "We can tell you whateve-" Kouen interrupted him as he suddenly dashed across them to the side, as he spotted the performer duo in the distance who already witnessed Kouen's fighting, and they were legging it as well.

The duo sneaked into a crowd and started to perform once more, trying to shake off the marine's trail by hopefully trying to allure him once more with the play. They already got most of the crowd sinked into the play but Kouen just simply shifted forward through the crowd, and when one of the duo were about to pretend hitting the other with a broom, he intercepted it by gripping onto the broom's wooden pole. The duo showed a genuine surprise to the display that Kouen just put on. "You think your little tricks will work on me?" Kouen met them with a fiery gaze, with one of the duo just chuckling in a unique way. "No... but it works on them." and before he knew it, the majority of the crowd started to get pissed off that the play itself stopped and gripped onto Kouen, pulling him back into the crowd with him struggling heavily against them. "Stop! stop it! I'm a marine, I order you to unhand me right now!" he yelled, but it seemed to go no avail as the crowd continued to be relentless.

The two would then playfully wave at the marine saying “bye bye fuddy duddy” they would then quickly escape into the crowd blending in. The pulling would continue for about a minute after the performance ends and then suddenly the people would stop. People would be standing there looking around in confusion in a bit of a dazed state as they wondered what was going on.

Meanwhile in the tavern billy would’ve snapped out of it by now and yell “dammit it happened again” he would then take out the den-mushi and signal kouen saying “they were here on our path but got away did you have any luck?”

He would then rush off out of the building looking for where they may have gone without thinking of getting a wanted poster from the tavern wall. He quickly tried heading to the middle path, hoping he would see them or that kouen would reply to the Den-mushi soon.

Then partway to middle path it dawned on him that he kind of left ubruptly so he would stop to check to see if Fresh was behind him, if he was he would quickly and frantically start searching again. If Fresh wasn’t there behind him he would backtrack a bit to see where Fresh was.

Billy had taken a little bit longer to snap out of the haze than Fresh had. He was rather frustrated to find out they had been duped once again – which was admittedly warranted, "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me" and all that – and so he immediately called up Kouen on a Den Den Mushi and zipped out of the tavern. Fresh, however, had one idea to pursue before he would join Billy. Any very social establishment like this tavern that was on the right side of the law would have a wall of all of the local miscreants that had been given a bounty by the Navy.

It only took Fresh a minute to find what he was looking for, and within just a few glances he had found the two faces of the ne'er-do-well performers. Maxio and Maritzio, wanted for thievery. Their posters were right next to each other, either out of alphabetical necessity or because people knew that they were in cahoots. Either way it was rather convenient, and Fresh grabbed the two posters and carried on out of the tavern.

As he exited, he was fortunate enough to see Billy moving quickly a few dozen meters ahead of him before he turned a corner, so Fresh hurried to catch up with him. "I have their posters now. Hopefully we won't let them get away a third time." Now that they could hopefully work past their ruse of being talented performers, perhaps two criminals wouldn't put up much of an actual fight, especially if there were three of them. Fresh arrived to Kouen just in time to see the crowd dispersing and two figures speeding away, shedding some ridiculous articles of clothing as they ventured to their next opportunity.

Fresh tugged on Billy's shoulder and pointed. "There they are. Let's make sure they can't get away this time." Fresh lightly placed one hand on his sword and rushed off after them.

The crowd were still relentless, pulling and pushing away Kouen and locking his mobility to be able to move a limb at all, until the duo had seemingly gone away once more and the effect they had on the crowd disappeared, with the crowd dispersing similarly to the previous times. When he finally had a chance to breathe from the constant pushing and pulling that somewhat roughed him up a bit, he heard his den-den mushi being called on, but he couldn't pick it up due to his predicament from before.

He was about to bring out his den-den mushi to hopefully call back whoever called him, since he imagined Billy to be the one who did that, but he saw Fresh in sight chasing after something. He must've gotten their bounty posters or something, as he'd imagine bounty hunters were typically the ones who held onto bounty posters the most, and it's helpful this time around to actually spot down those two. As Fresh rushed after the duo, Kouen wasn't that far off behind him.

The performer duo went to a larger space which is actually a shopping market, one might think it'd be easier to catch this criminal duo is such an environment, the problem is... it's heavily crowded! with a massive portion of the large, open square space being filled with people, buyers, browsers and sellers. Kouen tried to continue his chase after the duo like Fresh, but he got held back by a man at a stand. "Good day, officer of justice! would you be interesting in buy-" and with the seriousness of how close they were to the performing duo, Kouen reacted violently. "Piss off! I don't have time for your shit, I got criminals to catch!" he'd say, his anger could clearly be seen now as he's seen just shoving and pushing people to the side as he's running through the crowds of people around certain stands, completely disregarding their own safety.

Billy would be waiting for fresh as he caught up, after getting the posters. When he finally arrived he told billy he had the posters so billy would say “ hopefully thats the case at the very least we will know them when we see them. So can detain them on sight which should make things easier,” billy then followed fresh as they chased after the pair of criminals with kouen close behind.

As billy saw them enter the market he groaned in annoyance and went inside when a merchant approached him.  He said “ good day officer of justice would you be interested in buying some of my fine wares.”  Billy didn’t want to be rude but he couldn’t let these criminals get away again, so he replied without even looking at the merchant “ sorry sir i cant i have some dangerous criminals to catch maybe later.”

He then waded through the crowd looking past hundreds of people for the face they needed. Eventually though after lots of checking faces and the wanted poster fresh was showing him he finally saw them. The two tried to play it off but when they were sure they were being followed they took out a gun and shot into the sky.

This combined with there devil fruit they caused a panic causing all the people to scatter making it near impossible to see them as they made there escape again through the panicking crowd.

Fresh rushed throught the streets of Orange Town after Maxio and Maritzio, his tall and solid hair comically staying in place despite the quick speed at which he was moving in order to catch up to the two theatrical thieves. Hopefully the other two are right behind me, Fresh thought to himself as his quick feet patted against the stones underneath. If they are, we can round these two up and be done with it. They had already evaded them a few times, after all, and without the main trick of their special devil fruit ability they couldn't possibly fool the pirate hunting trio, right?

Unfortunately for Fresh, he was just about to be proven wrong once again. The two had entered into the busiest place in town, and though Fresh was right behind them at this point there was simply way too many people to spot them quickly enough. Fresh scanned and scanned as quickly as he could, though every second he didn't see them was another second they were closer to freedom. It was extremely difficult trying to navigate the packed marketplace. Even if they were only a dozen or so meters away by now, it would be a pain to break through the crowd to get to them without being extremely rough to the sea of innocent bystanders.

It was then that Billy and Kouen would arrive, and the extra set of eyes was a great help. As the two were easily spotted by Billy. The closer the two got to Maxio and Maritzio, the more it was obvious that they also knew that the three were attempting to follow them. Then, Maxio shot into the sky, causing an immediate panic. "This is no good," Fresh said to himself. Fresh nudged Billy and nodded upwards, indicating where he was going. There wasn't a point in trying to convey it worth words at the moment as everyone around them was screaming and shouting. Fresh climbed up onto one of the many surrounding stalls, then hopped onto the roof of the nearest building. This much higher vantage point would allow him to escape the crowds and track the two down much quicker. They had been getting lucky so far with finding them again after their escape attempts, but one wrong move and they could lose them for good.

Billy would fight against the crowd eventually going hybrid raptor to jump over onto a stall, from there he tries to get a higher vantage point. From there he frantically looks for the two tricksters sadly because of the scrambling and panicking people trying to escape it makes it difficult. Though eventually he spots them heading north, thankfully they didn’t seem to notice him. He then calls Koens Den-mushi waiting for koen or hopefully Fresh to pick up, he tells them there heading north.


If they didn’t pick up before he would loose them and the tricksters would be nearly out of sight, Billy would start to move along the roof tops as he follows them north. Seeing if they head anywhere or take any other path’s, he would then jump down when The pair of tricksters had stopped and Kouen as well as Fresh were out of the marketplace and start talking to them. “So how do you think we can reach and catch them without hem getting away again?”

They knew where they were heading so hopefully they could use that as a way to catch them. Billy would wait for there comments after he asked his question.

Fresh scanned the streets in search of Maxio and Maritzio, but unbeknownst to him he had been unlucky enough to pick a building on the southern corner of the market where he would be unable to see their retreat towards the northern side of the town. Plenty of people were running through the streets now because of the gunshot, and he could see from his vantage point that a group of a few marines was actually headed in the direction of the market. Not that that would do much good, considering the culprits were already gone.

"Ah," A realization had arrived in Fresh's head. If they had just called in a manhunt for the two wanted thieves earlier, this mess could have been avoided. He wondered if it was a prideful thing to not want to ask the base here for help with capturing the two, especially now that they had caused an actual panic in a public area. "Let's give this one more go. If it goes horribly wrong again, perhaps I'll ask Billy to call in a manhunt for the two." Getting two criminals off of the street was arguably more important than the three of them catching the guys themselves and being heroes if it had to come to that decision, after all.

Whilst Fresh could not find the two of them, he did find a rather familiar sight on another rooftop – a raptor in a marine uniform. "I forgot he could do that," Fresh mused, hopping over rooftops – thankfully the gaps between buildings were more than feasible for a parkour amateur like himself – in order to get closer to him. He was talking into his Den Den and was in a bit of a hurry towards the north, so clearly he had either found something or had an idea. When Billy hopped off of the building, Fresh hopped down onto the street as well to reconvene with him.

"Because they keep on having to run, it seems that they solely rely on their ability to charm people." Fresh had already thought of a bit of a solution when he saw the hybrid raptor Billy just minutes ago. "Something very distracting and horrifying might be able to break that charm. What if when we find them again you use your animal transformation to cause a bit of a scene?" Fresh put his hands on his hips. "I'd have to guess that would throw either them or the people off their rhythm enough that we could finally take them on."

Billy would nod nervously at Fresh’s idea, he wasn’t sure if this idea could work, but he figured it was worth a try. It was possible it just could work, so Billy says “ ok you go around from front and ill go from the back so that if they try to run  i can cut them off.  This also works because once  they start charming people i can try your plan to stop them  hopefully if this works they will just give up. “

So Billy would then wait to see if Fresh agreed to the plan, if he did Billy would then proceed to loop around the buildings to get behind the thieves. Once there Billy hid in normal form behind some barrels as he watched everything going on. Billy hoped this plan would work because he was running out of ideas on how to catch them.

If they couldn’t stop them from escaping each time whether from charming people or by other means then catching them would prove near impossible without additional assistance. As Billy hid and waited for fresh to confront the pair of thieves, he prepared to jump out, in full raptor form, the moment they tried to escape and perform a loud raptor roar. Hoping that in doing so would cancel out the charm allowing the thieves to be caught.

Billy seemed rather nervous about Fresh's plan. It admittedly put quite a bit of pressure on the young man, so it was rather understandable that he wouldn't be completely in love with the idea. Thankfully, he seemed willing to go on with the plan and actually proposed the exact way with which they would approach the two thieves. "Very well. I'll take them from the front, then. Hopefully this will be the last of this." It wasn't the world's greatest plan and Fresh was more than sure that someone a bit more experienced would've thought of a much better strategy to take care of these guys, but at least it was better than nothing.

The two were at another street corner, frantically putting on another performance. One of them was holding a broom out in front of them like some sort of device that you could talk into, talking rather quickly as if he were reading a poem in fast forward. The second performer was making odd noises as if trying to be a percussionist with his mouth.

"Well I'm Maxio and I want to say
that I hope you're all having a great day!
Maritzio and I are having lots of fun
Showing all of you peeps how rap is done!"

The crowd was, of course, cheering at Maxio's sick bars. Knowing that this was just some trick, however, allowed Fresh to resist their ability to some extent. Maxio and Maritzio were privy to Fresh's presence, however, and have decided that they're done with the bounty hunter's nonsense. Seeing him approach, Maxio continued his rap.

"Now I see this boy's tryna ruin our fun,
So my boy's gonna pop him with his gun!"

Maritzio withdraws his flintlock pistol and tries to get a good shot on Fresh. Unfortunately, with an entire crowd of people right in front of him, there was a pretty great chance that he was just going to hit someone else. Maritzio trying to aim took the broomheaded bounty hunter enough time to hit the floor as a shot rang out, the bullet busting into a post to his right. It seemed that the shot wasn't actually going to hit him anyway, but he was still glad to have ducked. The gunshot ringing out seemed to some of the illusion of the performance, with onlookers looking around with a bit of surprise, asking if that was a real gunshot. Fresh decided it would be best to wait for Billy to make his move as there was a gun currently trained on him – even though it was being held by a rather amateur marksman.

Billy watched on as Fresh would enter the crowd, he tried very very hard to resist the call of the performance, till he heard one of them mention shooting fresh and a gun shot rang off. Billy figured this was as good a time as any and from his cover he let out a loud raptor roar.



This caused the people to seem to snap out of the performance and look nervously around wondering, clearly worried where that roar came from. Even the two thieves looked towards orgin taking there eyes of fresh, possibly long enough for him to do something. Meanwhile billy started to proceed to walk out of hiding and stealthily enter the crowd. He hopef everyone was two distracted looking for the source of the noise from before to notice him.

He hoped that the plan worked and would move in to cut off the other one should he try to escape or in case they have a extra gun. Billy really didn’t want them to escape he really hoped they would be able to catch them this time otherwise who knows if they will get another chance.

Kouen had finally reunited with the two, or at least he believed he did at first when he came across the encircling crowd of the duo once more, he was rather late to the scene as the market proved to be more of a hassle then he liked it to be, it got to the point that shopkeepers were blocking Kouen's way and using any means neccessary to keep him locked in just to buy something from their stupid store. It took a fist to the seller's face just for him to get the message before Kouen could run along to catch up with Fresh and Billy.

He's seen and heard a lot of crazy things in his lifetime, but a dinosaur roaring at a criminal duo was just a seat filler. It distracted him far more then the play ironically enough and he finally snapped back to reality to see the crowd dispersing. It was a clear opportunity as any to step in and catch the duo before they could pull another cheap move.

Kouen moved in through the crowd with clear stealth, being crouched down and started to move onto the one known as Maritzio, a quick dash resulted from Kouen as he tried to close the distance between him and one of the criminal duo, Maritzio tried to quickly train his gun towards Kouen just for his arm to be locked in with Kouen's own arms, resulting in Kouen quickly getting into the man's close space and kneeing the individual in the stomach and then stepping back to place a hand on his wrist, twisting it to hear an audible pop as the man was painfully forced to drop the flintlock to which Kouen kicked away.

"Why... why aren't you charmed by our play?!" Maritzio would say, while the other man of the duo just stood there in shock, clearly scared. "Dunno, guess I just don't find it that interesting." Kouen would say, he kept a close eye on them as he hoped Billy or Fresh might have handcuffs to lock up this duo now that they've finally turned the tables on them.

The tables were about to turn on these two criminals thanks to the actions of both Billy and Kouen. As the bounty hunter heard the loud crying of a raptor, he knew things were underway, though he was still unsure if he should make a move or not with a gun still trained on him. Thankfully he wouldn't have to worry about that too much longer, as Kouen came out of the blue and began to tussle with Maritzio. As soon as Kouen had Maritzio occupied, Fresh decided that it was time to move in on Maxio.

Fresh stormed Maxio, who was now holding his broom like a weapon. "End of the line, street clown," Fresh said to him, unsheathing his sword and pointing it right at Maxio's face. With Maritzio properly subdued behind him, Maxio had nowhere to go. His face was noticeably pale and he was sweating profusely. Rather than surrender, however, Maxio attempted to attack Fresh with his broom, swinging it over his head and down at the bounty hunter. It was rather evident that Maxio had probably never gotten into an actual fight in his life, as the swing was pathetic and barely coordinated. It took little to no effort for the greenhorn bounty hunter to dodge such an attack.

In order to properly subdue Maxio before he could try to pull a fast one and get out of there, Fresh decided to just take him out of commission. Fresh sidestepped Maxio's swing and held his shortsword up and to the left, coming down with a powerful diagonal strike.

"Strong Flair."

Fresh's Strong Flair struck Maxio all the way from his right shoulder down to his left hip. His shirt cut open and a streak of blood immediately erupted from his chest, and Maxio fell on his back. He was already unconscious from the blow, and was already beginning to lose quite a bit of blood. Fresh looked down at Maxio and his own blade, noting how much blood there was. "Hm. He didn't really put up much of a fight." Fresh looked to Kouen, who was still holding Maritzio down. "Let's get these two to a base before this one bleeds out."

Fresh looked around for Billy, who he could only assume was out of his raptor form. "I'd have to say you out-peformed the performers there. Good work."

Billy after leaving raptor form would be waiting on the outside of the crowd in case the performers tried to escape. While he waited he vigilantly looked on carefully making sure all escape routes were covered he really didn’t want them escaping to steal from more people. When it seemed like they wouldn’t likely be escaping he entered the crowd to see both thieves subdued. He quickly gave Kouen his hand cuffs and then smiled sheepishly at Fresh’s compliments saying “ awww thanks it was nothing i had the easy part actually.” Billy then looked around feeling happy and satisfied it was finally over he said “It looks like your plan worked after all” the one thief who was consious would start ranting at them saying “ the only way you couldn’t be charmed is if you are incapable of having fun, you fun sucker! You need to lighten up and learn to enjoy yourself more! “

Maritzio would then proceed to continue berating them for there lack of a sense of fun. Billy would just stand there shocked then say to Kouen and Fresh “is that true do you really never have fun?” Maritizeo would some where in his rant say “ even if you knew what it was you still would’nt be able to resist it so easily unless you are incapable of fun” Billy would just be waiting to know if this was true.

OOC Note:

Kouen gave a thankful nod to Billy as he handed a pair of handcuffs and began to quickly handcuff Maritzio from behind while he went on his little mini-rant. It did make Kouen think, is he really incapable of fun at this point? perhaps, but that's just how he is. He knows that due to his somewhat rough upbringing, he can see himself being cold but he wouldn't say he's incapable of joy, it's just a rare luxury for him to genuinely feel that emotion. "I think your effects only works on those who had more wholesome lives, my upbringing was rougher compared to such a life and led me to be hardened as a result. That's probably why your cheap tricks don't work on me or Fresh." he didn't want to assume that Fresh had a terrible past or anything, but he imagined he had to go through some mental struggle of sorts that turned him into the man he is today, thus granting him a solid, mental wall to the criminal duo's cognitive effect.

The marine did grow curious as to how the duo managed to do such a trick, Kouen would be behind Maritzio to ensure that he doesn't try anything funny, so he doesn't charm somebody into letting him free. He's hoping that Billy and Fresh can handle Maxio and somehow stop his bleeding. Maritzio kept looking back towards his brother out of fear, clearly worried about his brother's life but Kouen pushed him roughly everytime he turned his head around. "Eyes up front criminal, nice and easy." Kouen would say. Kouen would ask Billy to perhaps report this in, but he'd imagine he might be busy with Maxio to either carry him or help stop his bleeding, so with a spare hand Kouen brought out his den-den mushi and called the nearby marine base. An old man picked up the den-den mushi. "Hello? who's this?" Kouen cleared his throat. "Hey there sir, the duo performers, Maxio and Maritzio have been captured. There will be two marines and one bounty hunter on their way to drop them off at the base." A bit of silence from the old man's side of the call followed through, just to hear shouting in the background before the den-den on the other side could audibly be picked up once more. "Understood. I'll send a few soldiers to pick them up at the entrance of the base, you can tell me the rest of the mission details once you get here." and with that, the call ended.