Several Anime Girls Appeared in my World

Chapter 49: An Interlude of Forced Slumber

The Cine Theatro Esperança, a place of forgotten dreams and fading grandeur, became an arena for a clash of titans. Moonlight, still slicing through the grimy arched window, was now punctuated by the brilliant, destructive flashes of power.

Dust, disturbed from decades of slumber, swirled in choked clouds, illuminated by the incandescent rage of two warrior queens.

Erza, in her Heaven's Wheel Armor, was a whirlwind of silver and steel. Her summoned swords danced around her, a storm of lethal projectiles launched with unerring accuracy. "Blumenblatt!" she cried, and a shower of blades rained down towards Hancock, each carrying the force to shatter stone.

Boa Hancock moved with a grace that was almost insulting given the ferocity of the attack. Her Kenbunshoku Haki screamed warnings, allowing her to weave between the descending swords like a serpent, her silken hair flowing behind her, untouched.

"Insignificant slivers!" she hissed, her voice a venomous counterpoint to the clang of metal. Her heel, imbued with Busoshoku Haki, lashed out, deflecting a stray sword with a concussive crack.

"You fight with the crudeness of a blacksmith, not a queen!"

"And you fight with the vanity of a peacock, not an empress!"

Erza retorted, her feet barely touching the decaying floorboards as she launched herself forward, a single, perfectly balanced blade in her hand aimed at Hancock's heart. The air crackled with the force of their Haki and magical power clashing, a palpable pressure that made the very foundations of the old cinema groan.

Hancock met Erza's charge not by retreating, but by advancing, her movements fluid and deceptive. "Perfume Femur!" she snarled, her leg extending in a kick of impossible speed and beauty, aimed not to disable, but to shatter bone and will. Pinkish energy, the manifestation of her Mero Mero no Mi, coated her attack, a deadly caress.

Erza, anticipating a direct confrontation, was forced to redirect her lunge into a defensive block, her sword meeting Hancock's kick with a jarring impact that sent vibrations up her arm.

The sheer force behind the Empress's blow was astounding, a testament to physical power honed to a razor's edge, augmented by Haki. "You speak of crudeness, yet rely on such… basic attacks?" Erza grunted, pushing back.

"Basic?" Hancock's laugh was a dangerous, melodic thing. "My dear, uncultured woman, even my most 'basic' attack carries more allure than your entire clattering arsenal! Slave Arrow!"

With a delicate, almost seductive gesture of blowing a kiss, she formed a heart shape with her fingers, and from it launched a barrage of ethereal, arrow-shaped projectiles, each glowing with the same dangerous pink energy.

They weren't just fast; they sought out the slightest hint of impure thought, the faintest flicker of attraction or even base admiration, to turn their target to stone.

Erza's eyes widened. This was no ordinary energy attack. She felt a strange pull, a subtle mesmerism from the projectiles that had nothing to do with their velocity.

"Requip: Adamantine Armor!" In another flash, the winged Heaven's Wheel was replaced by the incredibly dense, shield-like Adamantine Armor, its massive pauldrons forming a near-impenetrable barrier. The Slave Arrows slammed into the armor with hollow thuds, the petrifying energy sputtering harmlessly against the magically reinforced plating.

"Hmph. A sturdier shell for the same dull creature," Hancock observed, though a flicker of annoyance crossed her perfect features. Few could resist her Slave Arrows so completely. "But how long can you hide, little turtle?"

The battle raged. Erza cycled through her armors, adapting her strategy to Hancock's relentless assault. The Flame Empress Armor met Hancock's agility with walls of fire, forcing the Pirate Empress to rely on her Haki to navigate the inferno.

The Sea Empress Armor attempted to douse Hancock's attacks and slow her, but Hancock's movements were too swift, her Haki too strong to be easily impeded.

Both combatants were taking damage. Erza's armors, despite their power, bore scratches and scorch marks. A glancing blow from a Haki-infused kick had cracked a rib, the pain a dull throb she fiercely ignored. Her breath came in ragged gasps, the constant Requipping and high-intensity combat draining her magical reserves.

Hancock, despite her incredible speed and Kenbunshoku Haki, was not unscathed. A well-aimed sword strike, empowered by Erza's sheer determination, had sliced across her arm, drawing a thin line of crimson – an affront that fueled her rage to new heights.

The dust and debris kicked up by the battle clung to her silken dress, a further insult to her pristine image. She was unaccustomed to such prolonged, effective resistance from another woman.

"You are… persistent," Hancock conceded, her voice tight with fury as she narrowly dodged a spear Erza had Reequipped into existence. "But persistence is merely the virtue of the desperate. I, however, am destined for victory, for I am… beautiful!"

"Your beauty will not save you from justice!" Erza yelled back, her face grim with determination, channeling her pain and exhaustion into a renewed offensive. She knew this battle was nearing a critical point.

They were both pushing their limits. She could feel her own strength waning, but her resolve to protect her ideals, and to find her way back to her friends, burned fiercely.

They lunged at each other again, a desperate, simultaneous strike. Erza, having Reequipped into her Purgatory Armor – one of her most powerful, but also most draining armors – swung its massive, spiked blade in a devastating arc.

Hancock, her eyes blazing with a cold fire, met the charge with a direct punch, her fist glowing with the condensed power of her Busoshoku and Haoshoku Haki, aimed to shatter Erza's attack and the warrior behind it. This was it, a blow that would, if not end the fight, cripple one of them irrevocably.

The air warped around their converging attacks. Time seemed to stretch.

And then, he appeared.

Neither woman saw him approach. One moment, there was nothing but the certainty of impact, the next, a figure stood between them. Hooded, nondescript in the swirling dust and fractured moonlight, he was an island of impossible calm in the heart of their maelstrom.

With a fluid, almost casual movement, his hands rose. One caught Erza's descending spiked blade, the metal groaning in protest but stopping dead inches from its target. The other met Hancock's Haki-wreathed fist, the immense power dissipating against his palm as if absorbed by a void.

Silence.

A shocked, disbelieving silence, broken only by the ragged panting of the two warriors.

Hancock stared, her imperial fury momentarily eclipsed by utter astonishment. Who— what— could stop her full-powered strike so effortlessly? No man, save perhaps Rayleigh or her beloved Luffy in a different context, had ever demonstrated such casual mastery over her power.

Erza, equally stunned, felt the Purgatory Armor's momentum die, her muscles screaming from the sudden arrest of her all-out attack. Her mind raced. An ally? An enemy? Another player in this insane, dream-like reality?

The hooded figure held their attacks suspended for a beat longer, the strain seemingly non-existent. Then, with a slight inclination of his head, a smile touched his lips, unseen beneath the shadow of his hood but palpable in his voice.

"My, my," he said, his tone smooth, almost amused. "Such passion. Such… dedication to a foregone conclusion." He chuckled softly. "But I believe we had a rather interesting narrative thread left dangling, didn't we?"

He looked from Hancock's incredulous face to Erza's wary, exhausted one.

"After seeing that delightful little dream you both shared," he continued, his voice taking on a musing quality, "I must confess, I found myself rather… invested. It would be such a shame for it not to reach a more… satisfying continuation."

Hancock's eyes narrowed. "Dream? You speak of that… vulgar vision?"

Erza tensed. "You know of it?"

The hooded man's smile seemed to widen. "Know of it? My dear Empress, my valiant Titania, one could say I had a front-row seat. And the encore, I believe, is about to begin." He exuded an aura of calm, almost playful control that was more unnerving than any overt threat.

Before either woman could react, before they could wrench their attacks free or question him further, a wave of profound, irresistible drowsiness washed over them. It wasn't a physical blow, no energy emanated from the man, yet it was more potent than any attack they had faced. Their eyelids grew heavy, their limbs leaden.

The burning desire for victory, the pain of their injuries, the shock of this new intervention – all began to fade, submerged beneath a tide of encroaching sleep.

"How about," the hooded figure whispered, his voice the last thing they heard as their consciousness dissolved, "another little sleep?"

Erza's Purgatory Armor vanished in a final, sputtering flicker of light, her body slumping. Hancock's regal posture sagged, her eyes closing despite her indomitable will. Both warriors, moments from a potentially fatal collision, crumpled bonelessly to the dusty floor of the Cine Theatro Esperança, unconscious.

The hooded man lowered his hands, the smile still playing on his unseen lips. He looked down at the two unconscious figures, a creator observing his temporarily paused work.

"Yes," he murmured to the silent, watching shadows. "Much more interesting this way."

High above, Kael registered the sudden, complete cessation of vital signs – no, not cessation, a deep, induced stasis.

The energy signatures of the two women plummeted to near-zero. The hooded figure… his energy was an enigma, almost nonexistent one moment, then capable of negating colossal forces the next. This was not Julie. This was something, or someone, else. A new variable. A far more dangerous one.

And in the probe, Himeko and Mirajane watched their screens go from critical alert to a flatline of active energy from the two combatants, replaced by a third, deeply unsettling, and unidentifiable signature.

"They're… asleep?" Joey whispered, confused.

"Forced stasis," Himeko corrected, her voice tight. "Something, or someone, has neutralized them both. Non-lethally, it seems. But the method… it's beyond anything I've encountered."

Mirajane's eyes, usually so warm, were now sharp with concern. "And this new presence… what does it want with them?"

The question hung heavy in the air, as the hooded figure in the cinema gave one last look at his handiwork, then seemed to melt into the shadows, leaving behind only the dust, the moonlight, and two warrior queens lost once more to a dream not of their own making.

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