Chapter 221: Pointless Coup, Poseidon And Distance
Chapter 221: Pointless Coup, Poseidon And Distance
_________ POV Narration_________
As soon as the axe broke, everyone's gazes were fixated on the Emperor and Shirahoshi.
Enel stood unmoving as he turned his gaze towards the door, where a rather sizable squadron of Fishmen was approaching.
They were led by a rather large and stocky white shark Fishman with curly long black hair. Enel recognized the man as... Well, he couldn't remember his name, but he remembered that he would make an appearance.
"Not guests that I remember inviting here!" Neptune huffed as he grabbed his trident, smacking its hilt into the ground as he scowled at the appearance of the fishmen.
"Who are they? Did they throw that axe?" Zoro had already stopped pretending to be drunk, his hand was on the hilt of his Wado Ichimonji, his eyes shining a dangerous purple.
"Tsk, the axe was thrown by some other piece of scum that keeps harassing our dear sister..." The First prince also had his hand inching towards the trident on his back, a sneer present on his face.
He did remember to give the Emperor a thankful look before also turning to the intruders.
"Hody Jones! How dare you show your face here?!"
Enel just looked at the scene of the royal family arguing with the Fishman.
Shirahoshi still looked a bit spooked, which was quite in line with what Enel remembered about her.
She was a scaredy cat. But she was also a teenage girl, so the Emperor decided not to judge her so much.
'Controlling one's emotions takes years, even decades for some. Can't expect every young child to have a grasp over it already...'
Other than pondering on Shirahoshi's situation, and wondering if she really had the time to grow enough to be useful for the war, he was also staring blankly at the people in the room as they argued for a bit about some things he didn't quite care enough about to remember.
He didn't even remember the purpose of the coup that the Fishmen were attempting. He just knew they were weaklings that had no place in the New World.
They certainly had no right to give the straw hats as much trouble as they did initially. Hody Jones, or whatever his name was, should've likely died the second Zoro took out his blade.
Regardless, he wasn't looking at a story unfolding now, he was part of it.
So he didn't feel the need to just stand idly by while a coup derailed his talk with Neptune and subsequent departure.
"Neptune, would you mind if I disposed of these clowns?" Enel's voice broke through the hall, surprising most of the Fishmen, who didn't quite seem to recognize the Emperor at all.
It couldn't be helped, the Fishmen under Jones, as well as Jones himself, detested humans. They didn't care about the outside world, they were also plenty ignorant.
"Tsk, this is why this kingdom is falling apart! You let humans walk all over you King Neptune! An inferior human that shouldn't even dare to raise his voice in our presence!"
Hody Jones immediately jumped on Enel's interruption, taking that opportunity to rile his lieutenants behind him, causing them to cheer and raise their weapons.
"Inferior!? You seem to have no idea who you are even speaking to..." Fukaboshi scowled as he waved at their guards to surround the intruders.
Neptune seemed to be of a different mind, however...
"No need, Fukaboshi... Jones, why don't you test your hypothesis on how fragile humans are? I'm sure Enel here would be more than willing to assist you with your experiments..."
The King scoffed at Jones, crossing his arms as his guards retreated and sweated a bit.
They were both scared and excited.
Scared because the Fishmen that they were supposed to kick out looked rather tough by their standards, and excited because they'd get to see an Emperor in action with their own eyes.
At the side, Luffy just started laughing and went back to eating, knowing there was no point in worrying about the situation.
The rest of the Straw Hats seemed to agree, as they went back to partying, Brook started playing his own music as well.
This was all done at the cost of irritating the Fishmen further.
"Hmph seems we'll have to show these ignorant humans why fishmen are the superior ra-"
Jones didn't even get to finish his remark before he, all of his lieutenants along with a good part of the doorway and wall, were all engulfed in a blue light, expanding outward from the Emperor's raised palm.
The Fishmen had no chance to resist, Jones, the strongest among them, only lasted for a split second more than the rest, and it only allowed him to feel his entire body turned to ash.
It didn't last long though.
The lightning blast only lasted for around two seconds, shining so bright that it made for a nice light show in Brook's song.
Shirahoshi was the only one to cover her eyes, the bright light blinding and startling her.
And when she uncovered her eyes, all of the scary people threatening her family and her father were dead.
It was the same for everyone that didn't know how powerful Enel was. Even those that knew were shocked, people like Ussop and Nami.
The palace guards were staring at that spot with mouths wide open and eyes almost popping out of their skulls.
Enel had essentially just erased the heads of the coup in a moment. It was just like that, one moment they were there, and then poof, they were no longer there...
It was certainly a sight to behold! Too bad that they all now had a lot of work ahead of them... Stuff like repairing the burnt floor and the parts of the wall, and replacing the door...
Enel just yawned as he stood by her side.
He had stopped his attack before it reached and harmed the air bubble around that section of the island, so they weren't going to get flooded because of him.
"Sorry for damaging your palace, Neptune. That fly was buzzing in my ears." Enel laughed a bit, as he turned to the King.
Neptune only sighed, likely having expected such a thing to happen since he had asked his men to step away.
"It is fine, it is my fault that I allowed such a situation to ruin our good time. I'm glad to see that the other guests have already gotten back into the mood..."
The King shook his head and clapped his hands, his men immediately got to work cleaning up the place and livening things up again.
Reconstructing the floor and wall was going to take a bit, but at least the music started once more, with merfolk accompanying Brooks's music, doing their best to keep up with the skeletal musician.
Food also started coming out of the kitchen again, as a certain someone had taken the opportunity of everyone being distracted and eating all the meat available.
Just as things were settling down, another axe came flying in. This time, Zoro scoffed and simply slashed it out on its way.
The Royal Family was about to apologize for the inconvenience again, and Neptune was likely about to send the Princess back to her room where she was safe from Decken's throws.
Shirahoshi didn't even get to scream in fear this time around, as Enel just burst into laughter.
"Oh yeah! I forgot about that mongrel..." The Emperor's words and laughter were what interrupted the Royal Family, Shirahoshi herself looked at Enel with a shocked face.
"I'll go grab him... Take it as an apology for ruining your front door, Neptune." Enel sighed as he disappeared.
Everyone in the room was confused for a second. Even the Royal Family. They hadn't exactly given Enel many details about Vandere Decken and their situation.
'Could it be that he looked it up beforehand? I doubt it, we've kept it under wraps from what I know...'
The fact that a local pirate was harassing the princess was somewhat shameful for the Neptune Family. They were also a bit too proud to ask Whitebeard for help, despite their friendly relationship with the old man.
But now?
All they did was watch the Emperor disappear, feel a powerful earthquake which made the weaker among them almost fall to the ground, and then see him return while not even being a bit wet.
"I left him unconscious with the nearest patrol I could find... I destroyed his ship though, he seemed to have flung it this way as some sort of surprise attack."
The Emperor decided to just give the people present a small overview of the situation, before yawning and sitting back down.
"Shishishi~ I guess there's no reason to worry about fighting with you around." Luffy came and patted the Emperor on the shoulder, making him smile slightly.
Zoro also grunted as he looked in the distance. Many mimicked his actions, also looking out of the destroyed palace gate.
It was very far away, from the palace it could barely be seen. But there was now a newly formed gigantic crater right near Fishman Island.
The residents were bound to have seen it as well and were likely panicking.
Hell, most of the people that saw it couldn't help but feel their backfill with cold sweat, Zoro included.
He remembered how it hadn't been that long ago that he had tried to test himself against the Emperor.
Now the fact that he had been blocked by an earlobe sounded a lot better than actually having Enel take things seriously.
'... I still have a long way to go...' The green-haired swordsman could only lament that as he shook his head.
Neptune also sweated a bit as he called some of his men to send a message to the people and calm them down.
"You really aim to impress huh? Emperor Enel?" Neptune sighed as he watched the back of the messengers he sent.
"Oh, it is nothing. If anything, I still have a lot of work to do when it comes to controlling my strength..." Enel looked at the large crater with a bit of disappointment as well.
'I was expecting to grow stronger after awakening... But I wasn't expecting a small-scale Raigo made from only my own lighting to be that intense...'
Enel's fruit had grown significantly stronger. He obviously didn't use his awakened form against Decken or something like that.
He had merely teleported there, knocked him unconscious with a punch to the back of the head, before throwing his unconscious body towards the closest patrol, which was near the entrance of Fishman Island, and blowing up the ship alongside whatever crew he had left.
It was really quick, and Decken was lucky to have been spared. Enel didn't kill him only because he assumed Neptune would love to do it himself if possible.
There was also the fact that he may have blundered and killed the only person that may have known the truth about the death of Otohime, Neptune's wife.
He had forgotten many details regarding Fishman Island, including Otohime herself, he only remembered her because he saw a portrait of her.
But he had still killed Hody, forgetting that he was supposed to reveal how Otohime had died.
Now? Enel hoped someone else would be able to provide some closure to the Neptune Family.
He had also forgotten that Shirahoshi herself already knew who her mother's killer was. Which was why she was still having a hard time processing the events that had just occurred.
She had kept Hody's identity a secret due to the promise she made to her mother, to not feed the cycle of hatred with her own hatred for her mother's killer.
She respected her mother enough to respect her wishes and never informed her Father of Hody's crime to seek revenge.
Now that he was dead, she wasn't sure what to feel... That, coupled with seeing other fishmen die alongside him, and hearing of the capture of the man that tormented her, it was all too much for her to handle.
So she just started crying. Much to no one's surprise.
Enel just sighed.
'I guess I should forget about Poseidon's help during the war... I don't want to wait before she grows and matures enough to use her powers accordingly...'
Still, that was concerning, as it meant that they were going to have to deal with Sea Kings as well.
The Government did still have the recordings of Poseidon, which were going to make things problematic.
The mad Sea Kings were very likely to even flop into the Holy Land to 'rescue' Poseidon when hearing her pained cries.
Thankfully, the more powerful Sea Kings would likely be smart enough to realize the recordings were a fluke.
The Government was definitely going to use the weaker Sea Kings as cannon fodder.
After all, even a weaker Sea King was strong enough to injure a powerful person under the right circumstances...
'Whatever... I'll just fry the waters around us, or ask Aokiji to focus on freezing all of them before they rear their heads out of the water...'
The Emperor decided just not to worry about it in the end. They had plenty of powerful people that could deal with the Sea Kings after all.
Having Poseidon would've just been a nice bonus on top of that.
The Neptune Family was currently consoling Shirahoshi, no one knew if she was crying tears of happiness, sadness or just plain confusion.
But her big brothers were always going to be there for her. Her father also cared about her greatly, which was why he also stood by his side.
Luffy and the others didn't want to intervene in a family moment like that, so they just stood to the side and watched.
Either smiling, cringing a bit, or completely disinterested.
Enel only sighed and shook his head in the end, he was about to go have a last talk with Neptune before leaving, but someone else came along and tapped him on the shoulder.
"Enel~ I can see that gruff and serious look on your face... You can't possibly be thinking about leaving already, right?"
It was Robin, fully leaning on his forearm, looking up at him with a mischievous glare.
This made Nami cheer in the background, while some of the other crewmates just looked at the scene awkwardly.
Enel just coughed a bit.
"I guess I can stay a bit more..."
The Straw Hat Archeologist giggled a bit and pulled the Emperor's hand, dragging him towards the dance floor.
Enel smiled a bit and decided to just go along with it.
'The moon isn't going to go away regardless... I can spend a day or two.'
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