Facing Jabra's Tekkai, Tanaka advanced, clenching his fists.
At that moment, a surge of powerful chakra exploded from his hands, morphing into the shape of two ferocious lion heads that wrapped around his fists.
Immediately after, he lunged forward, not dodging or evading. With the superior insight of the Byakugan, he met Jabra's fist head-on.
Fist against fist.
Boom!
The moment their vastly different-sized fists collided, a wave of force erupted from the impact, sending sand in all directions, spreading ten meters out.
By all logic, with Jabra's strength and the hardness of his Tekkai, even if Guy were here, without opening the Eight Gates, his relentless Strong Fist attacks might not even break through Jabra's defense.
But Tanaka was different.
He wasn't using Strong Fist, he was using Gentle Fist. And it wasn't just any Gentle Fist—it was Gentle Step Twin Lion Fists.
The moment his chakra-coated lion fists made contact, the chakra surged into his opponent's body, consuming and shutting down nerve system like two lions pouncing into a herd of sheep, tearing them apart.
And what set Tanaka apart from other members of the Hyūga clan, was that he had fused Tsunade's chakra enhanced strength technique into his Gentle Step Twin Lion Fists.
Every strike was both a Gentle Fist and a chakra enhanced strength attack.
Gentle Fist—destroying the opponent from within.
Chakra enhanced strength—shattering their bones from the outside.
Thus, when his fists smashed like two rampaging lions into Jabra's fists, the smug confidence on Jabra's face instantly froze.
Boom!
At the moment of impact, a thunderous explosion rang out, shaking the ground beneath them. Jabra felt as if his fists had been struck by cannonballs—not just any cannonballs, but ones hurled by Garp himself.
A powerful force surged through him, shaking his body violently where he stood. His arms, originally locked in combat, were flung wide open beyond his control.
But that wasn't all, the moment his fists collided with Tanaka's, he felt two strange forces seep past his Tekkai defense, burrowing into his body like an invading army.
Then, inside him—chaos erupted.
Even in the One Piece world, where people trained in Haki rather than chakra, the human body still had the same vital pressure points and energy pathways.
And even if it didn't, that didn't matter.
Gentle Fist chakra didn't just attack vital pressure points. It destroyed acupoints, veins, organs—everything.
Splurt!
A gut-wrenching pain tore through his insides. Jabra opened his mouth to scream but what came out was a spray of blood, mixed with chunks of flesh.
Clearly, the chakra invasion had wreaked havoc on his internal organs.
Tekkai could harden his exterior, making his skin like iron. But blood vessels, nerves and internal organs?
They couldn't turn to steel.
"Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms!"
Fist to fist.
Power against power.
With Jabra's arms forcefully knocked aside and his chest left wide open, Tanaka momentarily paused before stepping forward, and with a sudden shift in stance, a massive Eight Trigrams symbole unfurled beneath his feet.
Locking Jabra within its bounds, Tanaka's palms shot forward like a violent storm, creating a blur of afterimages—raining down like a hurricane.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Tanaka's hands struck like a barrage of cannonfire, landing twelve precise palm strikes on Jabra in an instant.
With the Byakugan's x-ray vision, each of his strikes hit a crucial acupuncture point on Jabra's body with pinpoint accuracy.
His chakra surged into Jabra like an indomitable chakra blade, piercing through the acupoints.
At the same time, every strike that landed on Jabra's body caused the chakra in Tanaka's hands to explode like ignited gunpowder, unleashing an overwhelming force strong enough to shatter mountains and leave visible craters on his body.
This devastating combination of external brute force and internal devastation, like a concealed needle hidden in cotton, struck Jabra sixty-four times in total.
During this process, the color drained from his face at a speed visible to the naked eye.
His body, twisted from the sheer impact, was forcibly straightened out by the palm strikes.
Both his chest and back were left covered in deep, horrifying handprint-shaped craters.
Boom!
The moment Tanaka finished his assault, Jabra was blasted into the air, shooting across the battlefield like an arrow released from its bowstring.
Splurt!
Mid-air, his eyes rolled back, his mouth spewing blood as he let out a painful scream.
Crash!
After soaring dozens of meters, he slammed into the ground. The sheer impact split the thick sandy terrain apart, creating dozens of deep cracks that spread outwards like a spiderweb.
A massive cloud of dust and sand erupted from the crash site, forming a ten-meter pillar that billowed outward in all directions.
---
Not far away, Kalifa, who had been hiding among the Marines as a backup, had originally planned to strike at the perfect moment.
But the explosions from explosive tags had thrown the battlefield into utter chaos.
Unlike Tanaka, she did not possess 360-degree vision.
By the time her eyes finally locked onto him, he had already completed his Sixty-Four Palms combo on Jabra.
Thus, she could only watch helplessly as Jabra was sent flying like a cannonball, crashing into the ground.
Her eyes widened in pure shock, nearly gasping aloud.
In her line of sight, the over-two-meter-tall Jabra, who had always prided himself on his strength, now looked like he had been trampled by a stampeding herd of elephants.
His chest and back were covered in deep craters, his once solid frame now appearing flattened.
Lying motionless on the sand, he looked more like a human-shaped discus than a man.
It was clear, even for a CP9 member as physically powerful as Jabra, that Tekkai offered little protection against Tanaka's assault. Even with it activated, under Tanaka's Sixty-Four Palms technique, the defensive stance crumbled.
Tekkai was nothing more than a piece of metal hammered into a flat sheet.
---
"Bruno!"
"Jabra!"
Watching this unfold, Who's-Who, who had been blasted away by the explosive tags earlier, contorted his face in rage.
He wasn't like Lucci, who saw CP9 as mere tools of the mission.
The reason he reacted so violently to Jabra and Bruno's defeat wasn't out of companionship but because if this mission failed, he wouldn't just lose his place in CP9—He wouldn't even be allowed to live.
He would be hunted down and killed by the World Government.
In a single exchange, two CP9 members had fallen.
That meant, besides the hidden Kalifa, he was the only one left to face Tanaka directly.
"Rankyaku!"
Despite his boiling fury, Who's-Who was still a CP9 prodigy—before he became a convict, he had maintained the discipline of an assassin.
The moment he stabilized his stance and saw that Jabra and Bruno were critically injured, his right leg shot up instantly.
Harnessing immense leg strength, he kicked the air, generating a razor-sharp vacuum slash that carved a deep rift through the sand, and shot straight toward Tanaka's back.