Don't Own One Piece
Epilogue: Invaders from Devil's Nest
The Bladeless Samurai and their allies watched in horror as they saw the marine ship that docked on the shore. Sakata gave a small smirk as he nodded to the blue-eyed man who had addressed him as a friend earlier. "It's been a long time, Captain."
"I see you're as deadly as ever." The man looked with an emotionless face to the ditch Sakata had placed Kenichi's body into. "He was a fool but he was still an ally of the World Government, I'm afraid I'll have to take you in."
"The hell you will!"
"DJ! Shut up!" Gin covered the speedy swordsman's mouth. "Do you have any idea who they are?" A muffled 'no' came out from behind Gin's hand and the white-haired swordsman shook his head.
"That's Captain Damien Kiosuke, and Lieutenant Cain Dias. They're the commanding officers of Marine Base #216 of the Grand Line, otherwise known as Devil's Nest."
"Devil's Nest? In the Grand Line… they must be really strong then…" DJ blinked as he stared at the two. "Who are these guys and what are they doing here then?"
"Well they're probably pissed about the mess we caused. Kenichi had a lot of dealings with the World Government for crooked money deals, if you remember." Karen interjected.
"That's right" The red-eyed man, Cain said in a singsong voice and smiled wickedly, his mad eyes half open. DJ noticed for the first time he had a slightly curved blade at his hip. "We'll take you in and burn the whole damn town to the ground for what you've done, give you something to think about on the gallows." He laughed manically.
"You will not!" Before anyone could say anything, Jack took one of his unusually high leaps into the air, diving on Cain. The madman smirked and drew his sword.
"Jack, no!" Sakata tried to stop him but it was too late.
"Tres Puntos." In a flash, Jack fell over with three bloody puncture wounds on his chest. The swordsman writhed in pain on the ground, glaring at his attacker, who stared back with murderous intent.
"Be careful Cain, I want to take them alive if possible." Damien said coolly, apparently unphased by the whole incident.
"Sure thing boss." Cain smirked and sheathed his bloody sword.
Gin growled, having lost his cool demeanor from before. He clutched his bokuto so hard his knuckles turned white. "Damn you!"
"Gin!"
He dashed towards Damien with superhuman speed and was in front of him in seconds. "Sugar Rush Slammer!"
"Mira Tate" Damien held his hand out in front of him and to the awe of DJ, Karen, Gin, and Jack, a thick wall of glass came between Gin and Damien. "Your attack is strong…" The latter said calmly. "But my mirror shield reflects the strength of whatever strikes it, negating your strength."
"What the hell is he?" Karen stared wide-eyed at the Marine Captain.
"Damien Kiosuke ate the Mira Mira no mi. The Devil Fruit allows him to conjure mirrors on any surface he touches, even out of thin air. Gin, get out of there!"
"Too late." Damien narrowed his eyes and spoke slowly. "Shatter…" As if responding to the command, the mirror between Damien and Gin broke apart, sending shards of glass projecting out towards the white-haired swordsman.
Blood erupted from the young man's body as he fell over, covered in cuts from the shards of glass. He coughed up blood and moaned in pain, barely squirming through the intense pain.
The shards of glass fluttered around Damien in a circle, like a small snow flurry, reflecting the moonlight and sparkling slightly. "The Mira Mira no mi allows me to conjure mirrors and control them. I can even control the shards of glass that a broken mirror creates. It's like having a thousand blades under my control, each as small as a snowflake." The Captain still seemed totally aloof, as if he hadn't even been attacked just now. "The shards are so small and sharp they can even cut through solid stone."
Cain laughed. "There's a reason why they say breaking a mirror's seven year's bad luck ya know."
Sakata sighed at having lost his two best students to their own hastiness. "Damien, I want to make a deal with you."
"Huh? Why would we do that sorta thing?" Cain grinned wickedly. "You ain't exactly in a deal-making position."
"You know if we fought here I could still give you a lot of trouble, as well as take out a good amount of your marines. If I make a deal with you to go peacefully, you keep your men and get the reputation of capturing me without casualty."
"I'm listening…" Damien nodded coolly. "Continue."
"I'll give myself up freely, no struggle, and no struggle from any of my students either, but you leave the townspeople and anyone who's not my student alone. There really isn't much reason for you to burn down the city anyway. This way there will be one more town living in fear of the World Government that you won't have to govern directly and you'll get off even better without having to fight me." Sakata finished, staring down his partner in this strange negotiation situation.
Damien seemed to mull this over for a moment, still keeping his emotionless face. "Fine, you have a deal."
"What!? Sakata-sensei, no!" DJ stared at his teacher. "You can't do this!"
"Shut up you." Sakata walked over to Damien coolly. "I don't know who you think you are, ordering me around like that."
"H-Huh? B-But Sakata-sensei…" DJ stared at him in shock.
Cain signaled the marines to take Jack and Gin away, but the latter showed the ability to still stand on his own and walked over to stand by his sensei. "What about him boss? He's calling him sensei, guess he's a student too." He laughed.
Sakata scoffed. "He's no student of mine, he's just some pirate that showed up out of the blue a few days ago. I don't even know him."
DJ's eyes widened, he looked on the verge of tears. "But why… Sakata-sensei?"
"Board the prisoners on the ship." Damien ordered calmly.
"NO!" DJ blinked, tears sprinkling into the air as he dashed forwards towards Damien. "I'm not going to lose everybody again. Things are different then they were before, I'm different!"
He was stopped as a fist collided with his face. He turned to the source, expecting a marine to be standing there but instead found the heavily wounded Gin, panting and barely standing, but ready to fight DJ to keep him from the man. "G-Gin-sempai…"
"You idiot, I don't know what you think you're doing, but get the hell out of here, this is dojo business! Leave us alone you jackass pirate!"
DJ blinked, eyes widening again. "You too Gin-sempai?" He wondered why everyone was suddenly forsaking him even though they had done so much to come and save him from Bato's Dojo.
"Stop talking like you know me!" Gin slugged him hard in the face, sending DJ back a few steps. He punched him in the gut again and again, brawling it out with his former friend.
"Damnit Gin!" DJ tackled the white-haired swordsman, returning the punches as their fight turned into a childish fistfight.
"Alright, get them off each other." Cain sighed as one of the marines dragged DJ off Gin and began to drag Gin to the ship. "It's clear you're not friends, so we'll just take whitey here."
DJ blinked, tears welling up in his eyes again as he stood up off the ground. "D-Did he goad me into hitting him…?" He saw a smirk on Gin's face as the marines drug him away.
"He did try to attack you though boss." Cain added. "Should we take him in anyway?"
"You can't." Sakata pointed out. "I said you can only take me and my students without a fight, you said yourself it's clear this boy has no good relations with us. So therefore he's not involved."
Damien laughed softly and shook his head. "That's true… leave him."
Sakata began to walk towards the marine ship, passing DJ and whispering a few final words before stepping off. "Parting with a friend is not the same as losing them. Your dream lies on a different path than ours, but I'm sure we'll meet again." He too boarded the marine ship and disappeared from DJ's sight until it was only him, Karen, and the marines left.
DJ blinked, tears running down his face. They had denied their friendship in public to protect him from being captured with them so he could be free to live out his dream. As soon as Sakata had made that deal with Damien, Gin must have caught on to what he meant, he not only protected the villagers, but DJ and Karen as well.
Damien turned to DJ. "You're an odd one pirate, crying for strangers." He smirked, he obviously knew he had been tricked but allowed it anyway. "You have better friends than you deserve, hopefully we won't see each other again, or next time I will take you in." He boarded his ship, followed by Cain and the others. As the door closed and the ship began to take off, Cain gave an odd, fox-like smile and a wave to the two. "Bye-bye~!" He laughed as the shipload of their friends left the horizon.
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As Damien and Cain stood on the deck of their ship, The Absolution, Damien chuckled at the events that just took place. "Tell me Cain, did that boy look familiar to you?"
"Not in particular, why boss? Ya know him from somewhere?"
"Not personally. But a few years back, there were reports of an attack on a generally unknown island, there was only one casualty reported and a failed attack on the marines. The campaign there was looking for a specific target, a very odd target."
"What was their target boss?"
"Red-Haired Shanks, the Yonkou."
"Wow, talk about going after big fish, what kind of right-minded marine troop would actually go looking for a guy like that on their own?"
"That's my point." Damien nodded. "Don't you find it strange that marines would attack a no-name island looking for a Yonkou? Something else is going on here…"
"What's going on?"
"There are few people I know who could go after a Yonkou without attracting too much attention to themselves. Someone would have to be insanely strong and secretive in order to even think about going against him and living. If my hunch is right, that boy we saw back there may know something about this secret, which makes him a valuable player to us."
"Meh, whatever, I'd rather just take care of the prisoners we have now." Cain shrugged and began to walk below decks.
"Indeed, either way it's really none of our business. Although I'd like to see how this plays out." He looked back to the direction of the shore they had left. "That boy has grown up in an interesting way…"
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The next morning DJ prepared to set out as soon as the sun rose, Karen and her grandfather came to see him off after the difficult time he had because of them last night.
"You don't have to go you know." Karen sighed. "You can stay here, with us."
DJ gave a soft nod, keeping a straight face. "I know, but I have to. Sakata-sensei said my dream lies on a different path. They say life has an infinite amount of possibilities. I think that's a lot of bull. I think that sometimes there are very few paths to choose and sometimes there are more. That's why I always value the path I choose. Because I took the path that HAD to be taken." He walked over to the two and thanked them for all that they had done.
"I want you to stay here and show this town that there is still something worth hoping for, that there are dreams out there despite what the government would have everyone believe. I want you to stand on your own feet and make your own dreams come true." He gave Karen a light kiss on the cheek. "Goodbye…" A slight wind blew and he disappeared.
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Later, the members of the Bladeless Dojo were taken to a marine base, for some reason Captain Kiosuke decided not to send them to Marine Base #216 and left them in the care of another officer. "Sir! One of the prisoners has broken out of his cell! He's acting crazy!" One of the marines called out to his commanding officer.
Gin rounded the corner, grinning devilishly. "Come on out you bastards!" He swung around a piece of broken banister around like a bokuto. "I got plenty of punishment for the lot of you!"
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Even later, as a large amount of marines lay broken and knocked out on the floor of the base, the newly freed Sakata, Gin, and Jack sat on board the deck of a stolen marine vessel. "Well, what do we do now Sakata-sensei?" Jack asked his teacher, who was sitting in a meditation position, contemplating their next move now that they had escaped from a marine prison and were probably wanted by the World Government.
"I have a dream that I am very determined to accomplish, I promised my sister's spirit that I would become strong enough to protect those I care about, help those that needed my help, and inspire others to follow their dreams. I will make this dream into a reality, no matter what it takes…"
"I may not be an 'official' pirate, and certainly not captain material, but I do consider myself a pirate in spirit. Just a guy trying to make my way in the world."
"Gin, Jack… let's become pirates. The government already wants us, and we have dreams we wish to accomplish. What do you say? Will you be pirates under me?" He stood and turned around, smiling to his students.
"I would be honored to call you my captain Sakata-sensei…"
"I will follow where you lead…"
"Excellent! From this moment on, we are the Bladeless Pirates!"
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A few weeks later, bounty posters were released to the public, along with a few new faces among them.
WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE
"White Devil Gin"
Reward: 31,000,000 Beli
WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE
"Flying Marauder Jack"
Reward: 15,000,000 Beli
WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE
"Blind Bandit Sakata"
Reward: (Huh? Seems to be a smudge here… damn Marine printers)
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In the present time, aboard the Axe-Head ship, DJ reflected fondly on the memories of his friends' sacrifice for him. He knew they were out there somewhere now, with bounties and adventures of their own, and he hoped he would see them again someday soon. He saw it was morning now and people were beginning to wake up. Dusty, as usual was one of the last to wake up and a few of the other nakama realized that she wasn't in her own bed and was in DJ's. Of course Azu was the one to point this out most loudly.
"Dude! You're telling me there's a girl in your bed and you didn't even do anything?"
"Nope…"
"What kind of guy are you!?"
"Thank you!" Devon exasperated.
"Breakfast! Breakfast! Breakfast!" Axe rushed past.
DJ sighed and shook his head, chuckling softly. "Past or present, it's a long, strange trip"
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Tres Puntos: Spanish for "Three Points" Cain stabs his opponent three times in the blink of an eye.
Mira Tate: Japanese for Mirror Shield, Spanish for "Watch! Look out!" Damien constructs a mirror in the space in front of him to block an attack. The nature of the mirror reflects whatever's on the other side of it and can negate attacks up to a certain extreme amount of strength.
Hope you enjoyed this fic! Just a little bit of insight into DJ's past and how it shapes his present, and possibly future. Strange hidden powers, secret government conspiracies, friends reunited, the story isn't over yet! Check out kilnorc's Crew of the Axe fics for the continuing story!