Walking down the street of the small town called Komaki where the 'orphanage' was located I was living and training my mind contemplated what I had seen today, something I was still unsure of was not real but just a dream.
After the introduction of instructor Shen we had begun with small things in our first steps of the daily training routine. It began with running laps around the courtyard, shimmying through a few parkours and made a contest out of who could lift the heaviest weights.
I was under no illusions though. Despite our training being hidden under the guise of it being nothing but a game, a friendly competition so to speak, everything every child did or achieve was monitored and scribbled down onto sheets of paper by innocently smiling adults sitting at the edge of the courtyard.
Should one child tire they would be slightly admonished and their motivation to become better rekindled and nothing could hide from the hawk like stare, hidden behind an illusion of friendliness, the instructor Shen possessed and trained onto his new trainees.
I was no better. All I could do was follow the instructions, do my best and complete whatever assignments I was given. The only thing I could be glad about was that I had the mind of an adult and was thus a lot more impervious to the subtle indoctrination attempts of the instructor and his assistants.
Like that the group of children and I had spent the rest of the day, most if not all in blissful ignorance, until we were told to go eat some dinner after which we had the rest of the day off.
To get my thoughts into order I had decided to go for a small walk and now, here I am. Wandering through some god forsaken town in the middle of nowhere at the edge of the world.
I couldn't help but let out a small grunt in annoyance at the whole thing. Couldn't these guys from the world government simply just train us to become strong marines or something? Why did it have to be assassins of all things? I really didn't like that little fact and it irked me that I really didn't have a choice now that I had joined them.
With another sigh I let my frustration out and with a calmer mind lifted my head upwards, taking in the scene my feet had unconsciously carried me towards. Once again, I had arrived at the ocean's shore.
Kicking of my shoes I decided to walk a little through the shallow water of the ocean. Maybe the coolness of the water could cool down my emotions a little bit.
That, unfortunately, was a bad idea on my part, but how could I have known not to do that? Once I stepped into the cool water of the ocean I felt like tones of steel had been layered upon my body while all the energy left my limbs.
Swaying like a leaf in the wind I barely managed to fall backwards instead of forwards, which would have led to me drowning. What irony that would have been!
Luckily, I fell on my ass instead and with difficulty pulled my legs backwards, out of the water. With sweat running down my forehead I couldn't help but shiver at the thought of nearly drowning for a second time in less than two days.
After I had regained my energy and got a grip on my flailing emotions I understood immediately why I had lost all energy once I had stepped into the ocean. But knowing why and knowing how were two different things entirely! Obviously, I had eaten a devil fruit, which that was I had no idea. The question I had no answer to though, the how, was how I could have eaten a devil fruit. I thought, if I remembered correctly, that the devil fruit left the one who had eaten it once the person died. And since this body's previous owner was gone I had always assumed that this body had died somehow before I took over and healed it somehow.
This whole thing was fucking confusing and made no sense whatsoever to me. Unfortunately, I would probably never get an answer to my questions and I really saw no point on contemplating them further.
Thus, instead of tormenting my head with useless information clusterfucks I decided to instead find out what devil fruit I had eaten. Though, that left me with a little problem. How the hell was I going to do that? Not like I had any experience with those things and I didn't even know which devil fruit it was I had eaten.
The next couple of minutes I began to try and get my devil fruit to work, on a trial and error basis. I tried to move my limbs in some fashion, hoping to maybe coax the fruit to let something happen, I tried hitting a nearby tree to see if pain could force the bloody thing but in the end nothing worked.
Frustrated and tired and fell down on my ass and began to breath, simply to calm myself down as anger was never really helpful to me as far as I can remember.
Once I was calm again I looked down at my palm and began to contemplate devil fruits once again. There must be a trigger to those things.
'Maybe the devil fruit is like a mental newly formed muscle of kinds? That would explain why it always looked so easy for experienced devil fruit users to use their powers and for newbies their lack of control.' I thought to myself. Going over that theory once again in my head I found no flaws in my deduction and thus tried to simply will something inside of me to happen and happen something did.
Under my disbelieving eyes my right arm transformed into a shiny blade made of steel, deadly and sharp no less.
I could not take my eyes of the miracle that my arm had become and the feeling I had felt when my arm transformed into what it was now, a blade.
It had felt like an itch I hadn't noticed was there in the back of my head and wanted to be scratched but could not make itself known. But once it did it felt exhilarating and liberating as if something had just fused with me completely and made me into something. Into something more than I had been before and I loved every second of it.
Watching in wonder I willed my arm to transform back into my normal arm and it just did, just like that!
After my successful transformation all the frustration and anger of the day that I had stowed away promptly burst out of me and just like in an orchestra, all the melodies that were my emotions came together to form the crescendo, meaning I burst into excited gleeful laughter.
And who could blame me? I had just become a literal weapon and I would train the hell out of this ability until nothing could hinder me from going wherever I wanted to go! Not the marines, not the pirates and not those fucking sea monsters out there! This world would be my garden and I would see every corner of it!