A Joke
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One Piece: Desperate
🕑 Added 2021-07-19 17:11:44 +0000 UTCChapter 49
Title: Battle Between Two Kingdoms...
…
On an island in paradise, a war was happening between two kingdoms separated by a mountain range which had recently been discovered to have a big gold mine in it. It was quite the normal situation, and the Lulisia Kingdom was the one on the losing side and as the king was sitting down on his throne, he contemplated what to do.
He had sharp fangs that made him look like a vampire. But this was just aesthetics as he didn’t have any special powers from them. So while he sat in his dark throne room, pessimistic thoughts of what would happen to his family came about. His daughters… wife… if he lost this war then it would be terrible. Unspeakable things would be done to them as a show of power from the other king of this island.
“Even your throne room looks like a vampire’s lair,” a voice spoke, ringing through the darkness like the whispers of a devil.
“Who’s there?” Asked the King calmly, if this had been an assassin he would be already dead. ‘Unless he wants to torture me before the assassination?’
Suddenly behind his throne came a figure, he looked like a normal eighteen-year-old. Though he could be considered quite good looking. But what bothered the King was how calm the assassin seemed to be.
But as he looked closer at the assassin’s face he recognized who it was. “Ah, Bear D. Max… did king Uras send you to kill me? Who knew he would go as far as to involve the World Government. Now it doesn't matter who wins, because the real winner will be the World Government.”
“You like to make assumptions, old man,” Max smirked amusingly. “But, no, I don’t work for the World Government.”
“Heh, don’t joke with me, young man. Do you want me to be stupid enough and believe the rumors that you have a World Noble who is in love with you and lets you do whatever you want and use her as an excuse?” The King snorted, but once he saw Max’s smirking face. The old man’s eyes widened. “N -No way! Only a mad man would do something like that!”
Max shrugged, being unbothered by his shout. Raynare should have knocked out all the guards who could hear anything by now. Still, the King was delirious, he couldn’t believe something like this. It was madness, if he truly did something like that then Max would pretty much be giving the middle finger to the World Government.
“So how about it?” Asked Max, bringing the King out of his thoughts. “How about we join forces?”
“Work with you? Don’t joke with me! If I joined you then it would be the same as going against the World Government. That would be certain destruction for me and my family. At least I still have a chance of winning this war, but joining you would be joining the loser’s side.” The King argued, he couldn’t agree with Max at all. He didn’t care what the marine had to offer or how strong he was. After all, there were bigger things at play here.
*sigh* Max sighed in disappointment, but he still gave the man his Transponder Snail number and went to the window and flew off. Making the old man on the throne breathe out a sigh of relief.
…
Once outside, Max kept kicking off the air when Raynare flew next to him. “What did the King say?”
“He refused to join hands with me,” Max answered calmly.
“So just like you predicted then?” she looked at him with an impressed gaze. But he only smirked victoriously but didn’t say anything. This made her pout. “Humph! Keep your secrets then~”
…
On the other side of the island, King Uras finished having dinner with his family and went to his office to finish some paperwork. Today he was in a good mood since the war was going in his favor and he could feel that victory was within reach.
As he sat down in his seat, he looked at his humble work office and his smile widened. “Only a little more and this war will be ove-”
Before he could finish, a hand came out of the darkness and covered his mouth. Then the King’s head was twisted unnaturally.
*CRACK!*
He couldn’t even react as his neck was broken casually by Max as he came out of the shadows with Raynare to his side. She gave him a letter and he put it in a hidden compartment of the table, one where it was hidden, but the rest of the king’s family knew where they would find it.
Max then transformed one of his finger’s into that of a bear and pierced the king’s artery and blood spewed out. He took a cloth and used the blood to write something on the wall of the office behind the king.
‘GIVE UP’ That was what he ended up writing and they made sure to get rid of any signs that they had been here. Then Max and Raynare disappeared in the night as if nothing had ever happened to begin with.
Raynare looked at her hands and thought. ‘Why do I feel nothing? Is something wrong with me? Thousands will die because of these decisions… yet… nothing, not even a trace of anxiousness.’
She felt like something wasn’t right, three years ago she had been the kind girl who used to donate all of her wages. Raynare wondered if she had always been like this, an emotionless person trying to fill the void inside her heart left by her family.
Max noticed her strange actions. “Don’t worry, everyone is like this. You must be thinking why you don’t feel anything even though thousands will die due to us.”
She didn’t say anything as the wind hit her face softly and her wings continued to flap. He smiled. “Raynare, don’t worry about the thousands who don’t care about you. What you should worry about is the people close to you. Good people will always have it harder in this world, killing someone is easy, one pull of the trigger... Pulling the trigger of a gun is easy, living kindly and going to work every day is hard. We could have both gone to the end of the world and lived quietly, working day by day. Some people like to think killers like us are strong, in actuality, we are the weak ones.”
Raynare didn’t say anything and just looked down. But Max didn’t stop there. “I am a weak coward. Though I will never admit it to someone else. But that’s the truth. But what’s wrong with being a coward? The one who has no fear is the strange one. I am so afraid of dying that I was unwilling to just go in the middle of the war and stop these countries from fighting. But this would report me to the World Government and agitate them, so I decided to do it sneakily. Why should I risk my life, yours, and those that I care about? Especially for some people that I don’t even know.”
Max’s words were like the whispers of a viper, and Raynare’s thoughts started changing on the matter. Why should she risk the life of those she cares about? Her family had all been killed because her father had decided to not pay the tribute to the Celestial Dragons due to the bad harvest and how the poor population of his country would suffer. She could now see it, why had her father decided to do that? Why did he choose his people over his family?
As she was thinking that, Max was observing her from the corner of his eye. To him, all those things that he had said were… simply bullshit. He didn’t believe any of them. Max could guess what Raynare was thinking. Why had her father done what he did? Well, obviously he didn’t know better. He was a stupid man, that’s all there was to it. In Max’s eyes, there wasn’t some grand philosophy on things. Simply put, Raynare’s family had died because her father had been stupid.
Max was glad that Raynare’s family died stupidly because that had brought her into his hands. She was very useful, and in his mind, it wasn’t good or evil people that won in life, the world wasn’t simply so black and white. Instead, the winners were smart people who knew the consequences of their actions and those that could calculate the risks. Something that anyone could do if they tried.
....
A/N: Max has a way of getting into people's head without them even knowing. It makes them think that it is their own phylophies and ideas that they think. Like for example, Raynare's new hatred for her father. He didn't pay the Heavenly Tribut to the Celestial Dragons and his whole family were killed and taken over by another king who supports the World Government.
