"Damn, they got us good!" Mont-d'Or picked himself up quickly. He and his siblings were still conscious, but were in bad shape all around.
As for the remaining homies and lower subordinates, they were out of the fight entirely.
"We can still win this. With the fog gone, they can't hide their tricks from us." Opera said, unaware of the figure approaching from behind him.
""Opera!"" the long necked twins, Joscarpone and Mascarpone cried out in warning from their kneeling positions.
"Huh?" Opera tried to turn, but he was too late.
Jinbe's fist slammed into Opera's back, creating several popping sounds as it dug into his creamy flesh. Opera fell over, gasping in pain as more than a few of his ribs were snapped by that blow.
"You son of a bitch!" Mont-d'Or flared up. His other siblings who had recovered from the lightning similarly prepared for battle.
None of them feared Jinbe, certainly not when they outnumbered him like they did. So seeing their brother taken out by a sneak attack only angered them further.
When they launched their counterattack without hesitation, Luffy bounded over Jinbe's shoulders and started swinging with a vengeance.
Somewhere behind Jinbe and Luffy, Nami was carefully manipulating the moisture in the air to hide herself from view. With her old Clima-Tact, it was only possible to redirect light momentarily and she would quickly be revealed soon afterwards. Now that she had this improved version, she felt that she could maintain this invisible state for as long as she didn't screw up.
This was easier said than done in the middle of battle. Fortunately, their enemies were currently focused on the two meat-heads attacking them and would hopefully fail to notice her absence.
A massive tree homie stood behind Nami nervously. The vivre card that Nami obtained from Lola at Thriller Bark prevented homies from attacking her out of existential terror.
However, just because the tree homie known as Kingbaum couldn't attack her, didn't mean he couldn't act against her at all!
"Over here! The weather woman is over here! Kill her before she can make more lightning!" Kingbaum shouted loudly.
This sudden "betrayal" momentarily distracted Nami, making her reappear for just a second or two. This may have gone unnoticed in the heat of battle under other circumstances, but with Kingbaum's shouting for attention, it left Nami exposed at the worst moment possible.
"Don't just sit there, you big wooden brute! Grab her!" Mont-d'Or shouted at him.
"I- I can't!" Kingbaum denied, much to the surprise of the Charlotte siblings.
With an exchange of glances, Amande split off from the fight and charged for Nami's location as the latter desperately tried to hide herself once more.
"Nami!" Luffy tried to intercept, but was intercepted himself by a pair of hulking men with oddly shaped heads.
Jinbe was already tied up with Mont-d'Or and Galette, so he would need a few seconds to get to her. That would be far too late in a fight at the level of these combatants.
Amande descended on Nami like a bird of prey, her sword thrusting forward not to kill but to cause as much pain as possible.
Then her sword pierced its mark, a look of terror on Nami's face, but Amande didn't feel the familiar resistance of her blade through flesh. Nami dissolved in much the same way that the chess homie had before when she had sliced it up through the fog.
"Need a light? How about a heat wave?" Nami asked, appearing 10 meters away from where her mirage had been standing.
A wave of her Clima-Tact sent a roiling mass of superheated air directly at Amande. It was too close and too large to dodge. She couldn't parry or block a ball of gas. There was nothing she could do.
Amande was enveloped just as she was able to put enough strength in her legs to kick herself backwards and away. Her clothes ignited, then her skin turned red and started to blister. Only half a second of exposure left her crumbling to the ground in agony.
Nami squashed the pity she felt for the woman and focused on disappearing again. Of the Four Emperors, Big Mom's crew had by far the most and the worst sadists among their numbers. Though she didn't know about this woman in particular, she knew that Amande's attack hadn't been meant to finish her off but rather to hurt her.
"That bitch defeated Amande?!" Mont-d'Or couldn't believe it. Then his bloodshot eyes turned on Kingbaum. "Kingbaum, you traitorous bastard! You tricked us! You're going to be kindling, do you hear me?!"
Kingbaum snapped out of his shock at the sudden turn of events. "What?! No, I would never betray Mama! I prom- Gweh?!"
Kingbaum was interrupted by a longsword slicing off his tongue. Amande was standing again and glaring at the tree homie in cold hatred that stood in stark contrast with her severely burned skin. Her body was still slouched and trembling from the pain, but she was a warrior through and through; she wouldn't be so easily brought low.
*conk*
Amande was brought low as Nami whacked her over the head.
"You've got too much energy; go to sleep." Nami said, disappearing again before Amande's unconscious form hit the ground.
Amande's siblings didn't even have the time to rejoice at their long-necked sister's second wind before it was over again.
'I'm so glad that worked…' Nami thought, as a nervous sweat broke out on her forehead.
Amande had been subjected to both her lightning and her heat wave, so she took a little gamble there in operating on the assumption that the woman didn't have much fight left in her after all that.
The still fighting Charlotte siblings were having to rethink this battle now. Going back and telling their mother that they had failed simply wasn't an option. However, their prospects in winning this fight were getting slimmer and slimmer by the second, especially after losing Amande to that sneaky red-head.
"Worse than that, Kingbaum's turned traitor on us. He might not be a match for us individually, but he's enough to get in the way," Mont-d'Or lamented.
"I'm not a traitor!" Kingbaum felt very aggrieved.
That nasty woman had Mama's vivre card, but he was just a tree homie. He didn't have the life experience necessary to recognise why a slip of paper frightened him in the same way that Big Mom herself did. It was weaker than the effect the woman herself had of course, but "weaker than Big Mom" left a ton of wiggle room.
*rumble rumble*
"Damn it!" Mont-d'Or cursed, seeing new thunderclouds forming over their heads. "Tactical retreat!"
The Charlotte siblings started to do just that. Neither Jinbe, Luffy, or Nami were inclined to chase after them and let them go. Jinbe and Nami understood that letting them regroup was a strategic error, of course, but what could they do in the face of Luffy's stubbornness in staying right in this spot until Sanji came back?
Nothing they were willing to do, at least. So they could only prepare themselves for the inevitable rematch that would soon come to find them.