Fitz tried his best to cover his head with both wings, but bird wings clearly were not made to block out sound. The noise, like the cry of a rooster being strangled, was more than a bird with any remaining avian pride could bear.
"Chirp!"
"Yeah, yeah, I know my playing sounds awful. I'm just an idiot who can only play the harmonica, after all. I've always been hopeless with violins."
After stopping Fitz's pecking head with a finger, Barn turned his gaze back to his hands. The violin, made of walnut wood, looked quite old, but it seemed to have been carefully polished all along. It was one of the few things aboard that battered pirate ship that was free of dust. Perhaps the grating sound it made whenever he drew the bow was its way of protesting that no one had tuned its strings in ages.
"Brook! I'm so sorry-did you think I'd say that?!"
He whipped his head around, and a translucent face wearing a comical smile appeared reflected in his pale eyes. The ghostlike thing spread its arms as though to give Barn a "warm" embrace, but before it could finish, Conqueror's Haki surged out like a flash flood and tore it to pieces in an instant.
"You reminded me of some unpleasant things. You know, Fitz, I don't much like dwelling on the past. Makes me feel too much like an old man."
With a metallic ring, the red-and-black sword left its sheath. It spun once in his hand before he thrust it backward, pinning a reeking maw to the rotten ground.
No blood flowed, nor did any anguished howl sound. His attacker was no longer anything that possessed the quality of being "alive." A wolf's head, a dog's head, and a fox's head had