72 A field of ice and flowers (2/2)

As Angella landed on her feat shakily from the force of the previous attacks, a thunderous rumble overcame her senses. Her world seemed to shake as from the solid land that existed below her soles she felt the ice begin to cave outward.

In front of her the entirety of the ice field looked much like the back of a prehistoric reptile, built like a spiky mace.

With a push of her foot against the ground she leapt forward, the world zooming into a different definition as she pushed her senses to identify each and every point of danger on the field.

Her mind seemed to shift into overdrive as the world decolorized. Becoming a mixture of white and black, only highlighting the points of danger with a red incandescence.

”[Shard blade style: hell's rose]!” She roared aloud as the walls in front of her broke apart at the stab of her blade. A phantom of a red rose seemed to originate from her hand as it plunged directly to the ice mans location.

The petals seemed to rotate in an ominous way, each turn seemingly causing a point of sword energy to stream toward the helpless ice man. The energy twisted and turned in an elegant way from the very bottom of the rose's petals curving out from behind the flowers sepals.

Each blade form resembled the hooked end of a harpoon as it descended towards the man, surrounding him from all sides.

He could not do anything but push his Observation Haki to the maximum as he conjured ice hexagonal shields all over his person to face the attack that zoomed towards him.

[ICE SHIELD] he roared out, once again displaying his utter laziness in naming his attacks.

Each hexagonal curved ice structure covered one of his vitals as he guardedly looked at the frozen rose. He had tried to evade it as soon as his Haki had warned of an attack but had been too late. The colossal rose seemed to look straight at him as it bloomed, seemingly tracking his every movement.

'Damn of all the times for someone to awaken Haki..' he could not help but fume in his mind as he faced off against the incoming attack.

As the rose bloomed he could not help but marvel at the beauty of the attack, each petal seemed to hold a fragment of sword energy and as the attack began from the sepals, he could see the rose begin to open up, each petal jumping at him at the intensity of a machine gun.

As the bombardment began, Kuzan was morose, his mind slumped down with an odd tinge of fatigue. Just a few days back he had been forced to kill one of his only friends with his own hands, and after that had to go through a drivel filled report to the five elder stars at the end of which he had been left with a queasy sense of unease as he attempted to reconcile himself by justifying his actions. Then he had had to deal with the arrogant and overly zealotic Sakazuki who had been more than happy to mentally abuse his colleague with a barrage of status reports and overall marine dogma that had at the end of it left him feeling more mentally dead than alive.

Then, he had had to deal with his ship's misfortune and now this? He could not help but diffuse as he finally released his taught muscles. He had been forced to marshal his way through these murky waters for too long.

Now he had come face to face with a new world level threat. The marine in him wished to terminate this tumor before it made its way into the eyes of any of the emperors but, the human in him merely wanted to curl up and collapse under the mental strain, and under the beauty of the blooming rose he could not help but smile ruefully.