Was this all that Daud's life would amount to?
A trail of blood and bodies winding behind him, culminating in the death of a queen beloved by her people. A queen who, in hindsight, reminded him so much of his own mother. A mother he hadn't thought about in years, because the memories were too bittersweet.
Daud had never given much thought to the impact he had on the world before he killed the queen. It felt strange to do so only after the regret of his latest murder hit him like a rogue wave. It felt unearned. He was unworthy of such introspection.
Nevertheless, he could not turn his mind away from it. Not for long. He'd tried, but it came creeping back in before consuming all his focus once more.
He'd sent Billie away. He hoped it wasn't too late, that she could see through the bullshit he fed her for eight long years if she was away from him. Probably not. It would have been better to be honest with her, but he was too cowardly to do so. Assassins didn't deal in emotions and honesty.
Someone was here.
Not one of his, he immediately ruled out. None of his killers were so skilled to evade his notice once he knew they were there.
Daud made no outward show that he was aware of the intruder. He would let them approach, thinking he was vulnerable. People often revealed their true intentions when they thought nobody was watching.
He was growing more nervous by the second, though. Whoever this was, they were beyond capable. He was hiding out in an abandoned apartment building, one with countless creaky boards on top of the traps he'd set up. Yet there wasn't a single sound out of place. It was only pure instinct that let Daud know he was no longer alone.
A second Daud split off from him, stepping carefully and silently on floorboards Daud knew were solid.
Then he waited as he cleaned the tools of his trade, maintaining his semblance of distraction.
"Ah, you already know I'm here," the voice right behind him sent him flipping up to the rafters, a blade in one hand and a pistol in the other. "Perhaps not right behind you, though?"
The woman giggled as she looked up at him. He recognized her instantly, as he would anyone with a bounty on their head.
Big numbers on bounty posters were not always indicative of strength, but he didn't doubt that hers was accurate in that regard.
Even so, he was not frightened. Fear was something alien to him. A cut throat would kill just about anyone, no matter how strong they were, so it was pointless to quail in the face of a more powerful foe.
Not that he was sure he wanted to kill this woman yet. His duplicate was positioning himself for that eventuality regardless.
"I gotta say, I'm impressed. If I didn't have my own bag of tricks, you wouldn't be an easy man to find," Cheapshot claimed. Daud thought she was being honest.
"Who are you?" Daud asked, knowing full well what the answer was.
"Does everyone on the island live under rocks???" Cheapshot questioned. "I understand missing the news in prison, but this is a bit much, no?"
Prison. She was talking about Attano Corvo, perhaps? Did he hire her to kill him? It didn't seem like his style, but Daud couldn't rule it out. Desperate times and all that.
"Oh well," Cheapshot shook her head in mock exasperation. "Corvo sends his regards, or whatever."
Daud was moving before she even finished the sentence. He might be questioning his life and place in the world, but he wasn't about to lay down and die.
His duplicate lunged from her blind spot as he made a dash for the window, his pistol firing a silenced blast at her at the same time.
She didn't even attempt to dodge. His shot flattened against her chest without so much as budging her, and his duplicate's blade shattered on her neck.
Her arm blurred in a movement he could barely track, erasing his duplicate's head in a show of speed and force he could scarcely comprehend.
Daud was halfway to the window. He abandoned that path immediately guessing what would happen next.
Cheapshot vanished from place and reappeared between where he had been and the window he'd been aiming to escape through. Only now, Daud was headed for a hole in the nearest wall.
"Where- Oh, damn, you're pretty good, huh?" Cheapshot laughed off his perfectly timed evasion. "I guess you'll be fun to toy with~"
That might have terrified lesser killers than Daud, but he saw it as the chance that it was. It was a slim chance, to be sure, but he'd worked with bad odds before.
He made it through the hole in the wall, courtesy of the monster deciding to stretch things out. Another duplicate split off from him and they dashed in opposite directions.
He didn't bother with any mind games. He suspected that she already knew which one was real, even if he didn't know how she knew that. As far as he knew, the only way to know which one was real was to kill one of them, but he thought that Cheapshot already knew before killing his first duplicate.
Cheapshot stepped through the hole herself, made a show of deciding who to chase, then went after his duplicate. Good, she was playing along.
Daud wasn't totally unprepared to kill someone with absurdly durable skin or flesh. He just needed a bit of set up.
…
Cherry was glad she came alone. Daud was a bit of a monster for a guy hanging around East Blue.
He didn't seem like he could consciously use haki, but even so she thought he could do well in the New World through skill alone. That was pretty impressive.
She caught up to his second fake, grabbed it by the next, and snapped it. "Oh dear, I was wrong. Hehehehe~"
She wondered how many of the fakes she could kill before he just gave up? Daud seemed like the type of guy to do that, once he's exhausted all his options.
Cherry turned around and went after the original, just in time for him to split off another fake, who started laying an ambush for her.
She obediently sprung the ambush, grabbing the fake out of the air and slamming him into the floor with bone crushing force. Were these guys fully independent? If not, did Daud experience everything they did?
A question to ask once she caught up to the real one.
The fourth fake kept pace with the real Daud this time, mirroring his movements through the building. Was he testing her, even knowing how easy it would be for her to end this game?
If he wasn't a rotten bastard, she might have been willing to train him.
Oh well.
"Peekaboo!" Cherry tore up through the floor at his feet. She pierced her fingers into the side of the fake, just below the ribs and above the hip, before ripping it in half.
To her surprise, the fake didn't immediately vanish as the others did, instead swinging its upper half around her and grappling her around the neck and head. Prying it loose was easy, but her eyes were greeted by a pair of throwing daggers.
Cherry caught the daggers with a blink, plucking them away with her hands and preparing to return them to sender-
"Oh," Cherry looked down. Daud had dropped down the same hole she made in the floor. "Sneaky bugger…"