1 Fate is a bitch

'Was I always this callous?' Daz couldn't help but think to himself. The last year had been one clean-up operation after the next. Whenever they finished one the next one was already on the horizon, creating the illusion of walking up an endless mountain without ever reaching the summit and receiving that relieved feeling a job well done normally granted.

Well, it would if Daz's job actually was a normal job but he had had the biggest misfortune anyone could ever have had in his modest opinion, and Daz was nothing if not modest.

Why, you may ask? Well, if one waded through as much mud, blood and dead people as Daz did on a regular basis, you quickly learned what was important in life and what wasn't.

Contrary to what many people may believe, money, women or luxurious goods were not amongst those rather precious things Daz counted to be important in his life. No, it was more about the little things. Those tiny, nearly invisible, inconsequential things that made stressful moments in life less stressful and let you appreciate what you had and not what had been or could be taken from you.

Like a cold beer after a long day of killing innocent people, or a nice steak, grilled in the best oil the Grandline could provide, whenever Daz returned from a long mission and had only shitty ration bars to eat for weeks on end. Gods above, those fucking ration bars… tasted truly like cardboard!

As you've understood now, possibly, Daz doesn't quite live a life a normal person would call comfortable but, and that is an important but to consider, Daz had always known that life isn't fair and he could have been dealt a much worse hand than what he had, considering he could have been one of those unfortunate souls he had been ordered to eliminate.

And considering Daz hadn't been born into this body to begin with, the chances were pretty high that something like that could have happened!

You think this is a joke? Well, think again because that shit really happened to Daz! One moment he was running through the park near his home with his buddies from school and the next he stood under a palm tree with the remains of some weird ass fruit clasped in his hands, which by the way, weren't even his freakin' hands! Ye, you can imagine the mindfuck that was back then…

It took quite a while to acclimate himself to his new life, imaginable I believe, but it was not like there was anything he could have done to change his situation back to the way it was anyway, so he had learned to live with his lot in life and make the best of it.

Long story short: he failed. And rather spectacularly at that, hehe. Daz had, living in the local orphanage, soon been claimed by the world government, an organisation spanning the whole known world, including pretty much every island claimed by a government, ruled with an iron fist by the world nobles and their leaders, the elder stars.

Enforced was that whole mess by both local armies of the island, just as the marines who patrolled the seas and took care of pirates, monsters and what not.

Anyway, Daz was claimed and taken in to be brought up to become something lethal without a mind of its own.

Luckily, due to the giant slap in the face his 'interdimensional accident-not-accident' had been he instantly grew suspicious when his teachers at the time started filling their brains with slogans like 'orders above all' or 'absolute justice for the win', ye no shit, they pulled the last one!

Anyway, while he still learned a lot, and by a lot, I actually mean a shitload-like a lot, he was fortunate enough to not have become a drone like that mad fuck Lucci…

Still, Daz still followed his orders given to the best of his abilities, as he was not suicidal, which brought the results of his and Lucci's jobs to about equal footing. Or it may have, as Daz had stopped caring at some point about the fucker and how many people the lad killed.

Which brings us to the beginning of this little excursion into memory lane, namely Daz's initial thought.

You see, since Daz had been discovered to have eaten a devilfruit, an extremely lethal one at that if trained with correctly, he had immediately been pulled aside and given 'special treatment' by his new teachers, and let me tell you I do not exaggerate when I say that it was a miracle when Daz wasn't brought to the brink of death every week at least once. Ye, fucked up, I know.

But, the results showed. Daz, already equipped with a lethal devilfruit and a healthy portion of talent for the martial way became a young man to be feared.

He had even trained and done missions as apprentice alongside the CP9 back when he was still a youngster, learning to use what he had learned under the tutelage of his mentors.

Until, one day, Daz Bonez, killer extraordinary, had been given a position he had grown to hate over the years.

True, it had only been like 2 and a half years since he had started this job, with the occasional reassignment shoved in between to clean up the mess left behind by some bratty pirates freshly touring over the grandline that the marines couldn't handle on their own, which made his current job bearable at best as those missions were rather similar to what he had done back in the day as a trainee under the CP9.

But his new job? Ye, fuck that shit. Being a member of the CP0 'the aegis' was shite. Big, steaming, watery shite that smelled like that fucker Carlos he had to guard occasionally. Ugh, just thinking about that fat fuck gave Daz the jellies.

And now? His dislike of his job grew from 'steaming pile of shite' to 'a steaming mountain of shite' if you know what I mean. You don't? Well, here is the situation.

You know about the ancient weapons, right? Those mysterious, all destroying things, nobody knows what exactly they are but everybody wants to get their hands on? Ye, turns out some shipwright on water 7 has had the blueprints for one of those for years now and that mad fuck Lucci has been given the task to get them for the world government.

Obviously Daz shouldn't know about an ongoing undercover mission of such magnitude but he, occasionally, had to report to that little sissy Spandam whenever he was called in for one of those clean-up operations.

Well, Spandam simply isn't able to keep his trap shut and spouts top-secret secrets like its sell out in the local brothel! So naturally everyone and their mother know about that mission by now.

Which brings me back to the initial statement of that 'steaming mountain of shite'. You see, Carlos and his inbred sister whatsherface got ranting about what they would do with that weapon once they had it in their hands, which devolved into a hissy fit about slow-ass slaves that weren't fast enough to bring said plans to them, to mister and miss fuckface turning their ire on their slaves.

And here Daz was, watching as Carlos and Shalria were about to kill a little girl simply for being unable to put a tray onto a table due to her size.

'And here I thought I've always been vigilant enough to not get brainwashed into becoming one of the world government's drones, following orders like everybody else without thinking like the human I am. Seems I've been wrong about that, but than again, it also happens that a tool malfunctions occasionally, right?' Daz's thoughts went, resulting in a shit eating grin that held none of the joyous spirit he had had once upon a time, but looked rather brutal in nature.

Obviously, even a tool with bones of steel has a breaking point, which is funny since bones-Bonez, you know? Heh, who cares. This Bonez is still strong and kicking and guess who is going to be kicked next, hm?