One Piece of Music: Chapter 4

“AN ENTIRE FLEET?” shrieked Iroppoi through Aharon's Ko Den Den Mushi. Aharon flinched at the loudness of the shriek before replying.

“That's right,” replied Aharon as he turned his back to the alarming sight of the incoming pirate fleet. “Tell me. Have you gotten the woman to the clinic yet?”

“Not yet. I'm still a couple of piers away from-” was all Iroppoi managed to communicate to Aharon before the Ko Den Den Mushi of the Petty Officer suddenly stopped talking. Aharon questioningly raised an eyebrow in response to the abrupt cessation before directing a curious gaze at his Ko Den Den Mushi.

“What's wrong boy?” asked Aharon of the Ko Den Den Mushi. The Ko Den Den Mushi's only response to Aharon's question was to tilt its eyes in a manner that was reminiscent of a bewildered puppy, earning itself a sigh from Aharon. “If it isn't you. Then who is it?”

It was at this point that Aharon became aware of a sound. A familiar sound. Not the kind of familiarity which brought comfort to an individual. But rather the kind of familiarity which brought dread. It didn't take Aharon long to recognize the sound as that of an incoming cannonball, and subsequently throw himself onto the ground. Not long afterward, Aharon shivered in fear as a cannonball roared over him and then explosively collided into ceiling of the cavern that was the only pathway to and from the zenith of the Tora no Tomarigi.

“Mother...” begun Aharon has he looked up and then begun to watch as the most convenient means of traversing from the zenith to the piers crumbled into a mound of boulders. “...fuckers!”

“Well this turned out as well as I thought it would,”

“W-what?” stammered Aharon in disbelief in response to having heard a voice from the mound of boulders.

“What is that supposed to me?”

“You have got to be...” growled Aharon as another voice came from the mound of boulders.

“'You know EXACTLY what that means,”

“...kidding me!” Aharon continued to growl as some of the boulders begun to rise as if something was pushing upon them from below...

“For your sake you better hope I've got the wrong idea,”

“Damn it,” swore Aharon as he pushed himself onto his feet and then outstretched his limbs in preparation for combat.

''“Oh no! I'm so scared! Pah! What are you going to do? Tell the boss? Come on now, even Fabricio el Tigre can't argue that this wasn't the best of ideas,”''

“I am Aharon-gochou of the Kaigun Dai-Hachijū Shibu (Marine 80th Branch),” said Aharon as a number of boulders rolled off of the mound, exposing a pair of individuals to Aharon's sight as they did so. “And the both of you are under arrest for piracy!”

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“Hey Tsume! What is a marine doing here? I thought the base was supposed to be occupied with other matters? What gives? Don't tell me those buffoons of yours were unable to stop a single woman from spilling the beans!” bellowed a giant of a man with the ferocity of a tiger which had been awakened from a nap one too many times.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“Calm down Hanone,” purred Tsume, a slender man whose eyes were as devoid of mercy as those possessed by a tiger on the prowl. “This man is obviously some wannabe marine trash from the local outpost. He is no threat to us,”

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“Wannabe?” snorted an offended Aharon before he leaned over enough to solidly plant the fingers of both of his hands onto the ground. “Tough luck guys. You've gone and made the mistake of pissing me off,”

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“Is that so? Well allow me to correct that mistake!” Hanone laughed heartily before lunging towards Aharon. “YOU CAN'T BE PISSED OFF IF YOU'RE DEAD!”

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“No shit,” responded Aharon with a roll of his eyes before utilizing the both of his arms to sling himself towards the lunging Hanone...

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;border-style:nonenonedouble;border-bottom-width:1.5pt;border-bottom-color:rgb(0,0,0);padding:0in0in0.03in;">“Hey!” complained Thoosa in response to having the gaseous women's circling around her. The cyclops attempted to dash her way out of the gaseous women's encirclement but was promptly prevented from doing so by the wind being generated by the gaseous women. “Oh you have got be shitting me!”

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;border-style:nonenonedouble;border-bottom-width:1.5pt;border-bottom-color:rgb(0,0,0);padding:0in0in0.03in;">“This is the end you fucking one-eyed abomination,” cursed Aibyouka as she aimed her grenade launcher at the trapped cyclops.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“Saikuroppu Supesharu... (Cyclops Special...)” cried Thoosa an instant before she placed the palms of her hands onto the ground and then induced the muscles within her legs into expanding to an extent which was far greater than the expansions that she had put the muscles within her arms through.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“For Aeaea!” yelled Aibyouka as she pulled the trigger of her grenade launcher and as a result propelled towards Thoosa a grenade which was the size of a baseball. Aibyouka sighed in relief as the grenade exploded upon making physical contact with the winds being generated by the gaseous women and enveloped everything before her in a whirling billow of fire. “It's done dearies. Now. Let's go back to...”

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">''“...Gure-to Baundo! (...Great Bound!)”''

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“Impossible!” yelled Aibyouka in response to the sound of Thoosa's voice. Aibyouka took a look up and gawked at the sight of Thoosa being situated at what looked to be hundreds of feet into the air. “But the only way for the grenade to have blown her that high up is for her to have taken a direct hit, and under those circumstances there is no way she could have survived!

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“It's a good thing there was nothing stopping me from jumping straight up! Hurhurhurha!” yuked Thoosa as she begun to descend.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“Don't sweat it grandmother!” said the gaseous women together before they rocketed towards Thoosa, each of them them spinning into a twister as they did so. “We'll take care of her once and for all!”

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“I don't know what your problem is grandmother...” Thoosa begun to declare a moment before she inhaled in an overly dramatic manner. Much to the gaseous women's horror, Thoosa's inhalation generated enough suction to completely disrupt their spinning with the resultant turbulence and then briskly draw them into Thoosa's mouth. Subsequently, Thoosa exhaled neither the gaseous women nor the air that the gaseous women were constituted of. Rather Thoosa discharged an inferno which was as glaringly white as the Sun's corona during the solar eclipse.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“Saikuroppu Supesharu, 'Furea Faia!' (Cyclops Special, Flare Fire!)” thought Thoosa as her fiery exhalation descended with a roar which was even more egotistical than those bellowed by the proudest of lions. Aibyouka's pupils visibly dilated in fear as the cyclops-made inferno plummeted onto her with the abruptness of a flash flood, immediately enshrouding not only her but the entirety of the Neko no Soukutsu within a shimmering conflagration of immaculately white flames as it did so. The old woman hissed as the brilliance of her ignited environment instantaneously blinded her.'''

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“But I'm quite sure that you need to stop concerning yourself with the poverty bestowed onto you by your past...” continued Thoosa as the she nonchalantly dived into the very fire which she had set the Neko no Soukutsu ablaze with and straight towards a thoroughly panicked Aibyouka.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“Damn you to the deepest pits of hell!” swore a sightless Aibyouka as she thoughtlessly commenced to fire her grenade launcher towards the direction which she heard Thoosa speaking from, having been driven over the brink of madness by the frustrations of sudden blindness. Unfortunately for Aibyouka, she failed to correctly aim her grenade launcher into propelling so much as a single grenade into colliding with Thoosa. Even more unfortunately for Aibyouka, her aforementioned failure cost her the fight. For the misfired grenades erupted into a series of explosions and the resultant shock waves accelerated Thoosa's descent to the extent where the cyclops was upon Aibyouka before the old woman could finish a pull of the trigger of her grenade launcher.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“...and focus upon the prosperity offered by the future!” finished Thoosa as she unrelentingly slammed into Aibyouka's cheeks a punch fueled by the velocity bestowed onto Thoosa by both the gravitation of the planet and the shock waves emitted by the explosions caused by Aibyouka's misfired grenades. Immediately after the punch, Aibyouka dropped face-first into a skid along the burning pier while Thoosa hurtled through the air for some time before crashing into the sea. After about a minute, Thoosa surfaced with a desperate gasp for air before draping herself upon the edge of the pier. Thoosa squinted in response to the sight of the brilliant flame which the pier was engulfed within before sighing in relief. “It's a good thing that fire is a lot more light than it is heat, or else grandma and I would have been in some serious trouble,”

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">Thoosa hung onto the pier for quite a bit of time before eventually pulling herself onto it. After some searching, she found the dine and dasher with his face embedded into the pier. Thoosa winced at the sight of the battered up man before slinging the dine and dasher over her shoulder and trudging off with a limp.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“Ugh. Everything is so sore. My arms, my legs, and even my teeth. Man. I shouldn't had used Saikuroppu Supesharu (Cyclops' Special) so much...”

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“The hell is that sound?” said Chindan, a slightly dark-skinned girl whose shoulder-length hair possessed the hue of the full moon, more to herself than to anyone else right after having delivered an order of beignets to a customer.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“The noise our bones are going to be making while Shuga thrashes us for slacking off! Now back to work with you!” answered Uwasa, a girl with purplish blue hair and a pair of strikingly blue-green eyes, while taking the order of a customer.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“No seriously,” said Chindan in a deadly serious tone of voice to everyone within the confines of the dining hall rather than just herself. “What is that sound? It's familiar yet also foreign at the same time...”

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“Familiar yet foreign?” muttered Goshippu, a girl with stereotypically blonde hair which was tied into a slightly over shoulder-length pigtail and a pair of generically blue eyes, as she tended to the contusions of an unconscious Ruriko Fujitani, whom Shuga had left bleeding at the mouth in a corner of L'Origine. “Wow. I never knew you were the cryptic type Chindan...”

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“Really guys!” screamed Chindan with a stomp of her foot, earning herself the undivided attention of the dining room's occupants. “I can totally hear this weird noise and it's getting on my last nerves!"

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“I don't hear anything,” snickered Gebahyou, a deaf but lip reading girl whose crimson hair was tied into a pair of waist-length pigtails, while cleaning after customers whom had already vacated the restaurant. “Honestly,”

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“Hardy har har Geba-chan,” snorted Chindan at Gebahyou whom was too distracted by her work to notice. “Zokuwa! Hear me it!”

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“If it's bothering you so much why don't you just ask Kakuzatou about it?” advised Zokuwa, a girl with both a pair of ears which were identical to those possessed by cats and orange hair which stretched to her waist, while she was accepting payment from a customer at the front desk. “I heard that her hunches are always...”

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“...EVERYBODY GET DOWN!” suddenly ordered Zokuwa in a shriek befitting that of a spooked cat. Immediately everybody within the dinner threw themselves onto the ground with the sole exception of Gebahyou whom was pulled onto the ground by a nearby customer. Everybody knew that when Zokuwa said to get down, you had better get down!

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“Ruriko you crazy bitch!” swore Uwasa as an instinctive response to being in a crisis. Before anyone could manage to correct Uwasa, all hell broke loose. Explosions broke out throughout the restaurant. Both debris and the remains of the unfortunate were strewn around as these explosions went off. Chindan clenched her teeth in anger in response to having the back of her head scalded by a splash of boiling blood. It wasn't long before the explosions came to a stop. By this point in time the majority of the restaurant was nothing but burned wood and the charred remains of the deceased.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“WHO FUCKING DARES!” howled an infuriated Chindan as she stood to her feet and took a look outside of the restaurant in search of a perpetrator. While doing so Chindan took notice and raised an eyebrow at the sight of cracked spheres lying amongst the remains of the restaurant. From the looks of them, Chindan guessed that the spheres were the remains of cannonballs. Chindan then quickly left the restaurant and took a look from the pier. “Oh shit! It's an entire goddamn fleet! They're bombarding us from the goddamn ocean!”

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“Mother-” Goshippu almost swore as she tossed a burning log off of both herself and a still unconscious Ruriko. “Okay. Whom, other than Chindan of course, amongst L'Origine staff is still alive?”

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“W-w-hat in the world was that?” wailed a tearful Gebahyou who was splattered with some of the melted innards of the customer whom had pulled her to the ground. Chindan winced at the gory sight before mentally taking note of Gebahyou's survival.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“I'm fine,” answered Uwasa as she erupted from dark depths of a pile of rubble with a pair of kids clinging onto her hips. “And thankfully so are these kids. Though their mother has seen better days...”

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“Uwasa!” snapped Zokuwa as she withdrew a lengthy piece of wood from where it was impaled within her side with a grunt of pain. “Show some sensitivity!”

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“So we're all fine,” Goshippu murmured to herself with a sigh of relief, stroking the hair of an unconscious Ruriko in a motherly manner as she did so. Besides the damage inflicted upon her by Shuga, Ruriko was completely unscathed. “We're all fine...”

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">''“Well yes. But not for long...”''

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“What was that?” asked Chindan from the pier. Zokuwa glowered at the sphere from which the voice arose from before digging through the remains of the front desk.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“A dead man,” hissed Zokuwa an instant before she pulled an enormous chainsaw from the remains and fired it up. Right afterward the upper half of a man with fangs for teeth and claws for fingernails burst from the sphere. The man gawked at the sight of Zokuwa and her chainsaw before commencing to struggle to free the rest of himself. Before he could manage to do so, Zokuwa brought the saw down upon the man.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“AAAHHHhhh!!!...”

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“H-hey!” came from one of the other spheres right before feral looking men broke themselves free from each and every one of the spheres with ease. “You bitch!”

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">“To arms!” cried Zokuwa before charging towards one of the men with her chainsaw blaring...