Annoyances

To many the steady staccato of canons firing and cannonballs exploding would have been nothing but terrifying. Each explosion set of sounded like claps of thunder cracking over the ocean, with no obstacle to break the soundwaves upon, it carried farther than most would think.

The closer they got, the louder said explosion grew and at some point the lightning of illuminating explosions joined the roar of thundering cannons, completing the perfect depicting of the horror that was war.

While understandably the former slaves either stared in fascinated shock or shivered in their boots at the look of the scene before them, Daz only felt a slight sense of nostalgia while looking at the Bustercall.

He never had actually seen a Bustercall per se, but in his opinion a Bustercall wasn't really different from a normal bombardment, which he HAD seen plenty of in the past, only on a larger scale.

Spitting out the stick that belonged to his now finished lollipop, Daz glanced over to the tower of Justice, the main building of the Cipher Pol public office, which looked precariously like it might collapse at any time now.

Some moron had obviously seen fit to fire of some kind of circular cutting attack while inside the building, splitting the whole structure into two parts, with the upper part slowly sliding down.

Daz once again was amazed by the crackheads that could be found in this world, each time baffling him at their idiocy.

Though, what good could come of an organisation that put someone like Spandam in a position of leadership, anyway? The man was equally retarded as his father had been. And neither had ever received any real kind of training to efficiently lead Cipher Pol, at least to his knowledge.

It made him wonder what the elder stars were thinking back then. To him, the elder stars had always been a group of cunning old men that should never be underestimated, and after meeting the group a few times he was even more convinced of his estimation.

And yet, those powerful and somewhat wise men, had seen fit to put Spandam and his father into the position of leadership of an organisation like Cipher Pol, incredibly important in their function of gathering intelligence, assassination operations and protection of those the elder stars deemed important enough.

His thoughts were interrupted though by one of the buildings leading towards the pier at the end of Enies Lobby exploding outwards, which obviously could not be caused by cannonballs.

What came out of said building was a fist of all things, blowing the towers top to pieces, while a person was blasted away from the impact, and as Daz's luck would have it, came flying straight towards them.

'Fucking hell man, my luck strikes again…' Daz thought to himself while pushing the munchkin behind him and motioning for the former slaves to move to the opposite side of their ship.

Letting his leash over his observation Haki loose, Daz immediately felt a plethora of different presences fill his mind, ranging from pitifully weak to a little less weak.

Blurring away in a silent Soru, Daz appeared in the path of the person flying towards them and caught said person in a steel like grip at the neck, causing said person to wheeze on impact as their body still tried to move further but was prevented from doing so.

As Daz had registered earlier through his Haki, the moron in his grip was none other than Rob Lucci, asshole extraordinare with an ego as big as Enies Lobby.

"Heh, who would have thought I would get to see your sorry ass one last time, Lucci." Daz said from behind his white mask in a slightly amused voice, all the while hopping easily in place up in the air.

"Who the hell are you?" Lucci asked back, trying not to show how hard it was for him to speak inside the vice like grip Daz had on the man's throat, which was a rather pitiful performance in Daz's opinion.

"Already forgotten me, have you? Can't blame you, really. Nobody likes being worse at practically everything than somebody else they know. Whatever, seems like you have caused quite the shitstorm with your performance today. I'm looking forward to hearing the judgement the elder stars will levy upon your dumb ass once this whole thing is over." Daz said while his eyes moved over the rest of the gathered Marine ships.

One such ship was being crushed under some giant foot right as he was looking, obviously belonging to the guy that had sent Lucci flying into his waiting palm.

After taking care of said ship the boy in tattered clothes seemed to have found the two of them though and made to attack them as if in a fit of rage.

Daz grunted at the annoyance the boy was being, after glancing backwards once, and seeing that his now giant fist was on collision course with his ship.

Clicking his tongue at the inconvenience of the whole thing, Daz decided to get this over with quickly and get back to the ship afterwards.

"Seems today is just one big mess for you my friend. Unfortunately, it won't get better for you." Daz said, his voice having transitioned from his conversational tone to the monotonous tone he equipped each time he slipped into his professional persona. To him, that persona was like a mask he wore, which he had created in his earlier days in order not to crack under the strain of his tutelage, and though he didn't really need it anymore it still felt more comfortable for him to act with it in certain situations, and killing was one of them.

To a professional killer like Daz emotions, be they good or bad, were only a hindrance, something he had learned to mute a long time ago, which made killing less personal and thus easier to cope with as a boy. After all that time though, it was simply a habit.

Transforming the fingers that held Lucci at the throat into curved blades, blackened by his armament Haki, Daz simply tightened his grip on the man's throat, and even though Lucci tried to use his Tekkai to stop the attack from harming him, Daz had long since gone past the simple variant of the Rokushiki and only saw this primitive form of the Tekkai as a nuisance.

Thus, it came as no surprise, when all that remained in his now soiled hand was the head of Lucci, eyes wide in shock with their light dimming by the second until it was gone.

Lucci's body however fell down into the sea where it disappeared swiftly.

After throwing the now dead man's head aside, Daz returned his focus to the rapidly approaching giant hand, which he unfortunately could not just dodge, due to the ship being behind him.

Turning his whole arm into a still flexible steel blade, his arm was now literally made from sharpened metal, which he then covered in a sheen of blackened Haki, turning the already hard appendage into something incredibly dense and robust.

Blurring forwards in his silent Soru, Daz reappeared before the giant hand and with the Soru's speed still applied to his arm after coming out of his forwards motion swiped his right arm forwards in a cut, cutting open the arm over its whole length, resulting in a scream of the one whom it belonged to.

Obviously, the attack came to a stop, said arm shrinking rapidly, and was soon after held cradled in another arm, while the owner dangled from a nearby mast by his weirdly elongated legs.

The threat taken care of, Daz didn't care to stay any longer and disappeared in another Soru back to his ship that had already put quite some distance to the pier of Enies Lobby.

While the Marines continued to hail down Cannonballs onto the island, Daz reappeared on deck of his ship and, after cleaning his soiled hands on another handkerchief, joined the little munchkin, who had obviously watched the whole thing from her position on deck, and was now looking at him with wide eyes.

Sighing slightly in frustration at having to deal with explaining to her young mind the necessity of some things, Daz resigned himself to his role and sat down before the munchkin, motioning for her to join him, beginning to explain to her why he had done what he had done.

Surprisingly, explaining this to her caused him more fatigue then killing Lucci back then, but some things simply needed to be done, no matter if you liked doing them or not. And this was one of them. He just hoped he didn't mess this up. Heavens knew he wasn't the most gentle of men out there, let alone his inexperience with children. Heh, what a day this had been.