Chapter 244

[Note: Forgot to add the images in the previous chapter, but now I added them. Do check them out!!]

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"What would you do after taking over the world and everything? I am curious all of a sudden."

Amon stared at Raki briefly before turning his face outside the window to observe the celebration below. A cup of coffee appeared in his hand, and he took a small sip.

"I thought you knew already." He muttered, not looking at her eyes.

Raki shrugged.

"I was just guessing until now, y’know. I thought you would just keep taking over planets after planets one by one, galaxy by galaxy, and therefore one day take over the entire universe - if that's even possible."

She turned her gaze to him. "But I recently had an epiphany... Yesterday, you gave me such a powerful devil fruit."

Raki clenched her fist as she said that, and immediately a half-transparent orb the size of a football formed around her fist.

"Don't mean any ungratefulness," She scowled as the orb disappeared. "But you are a really selfish piece of garbage. I wasn't expecting you to just suddenly give me a 2nd fruit. If anything, I thought you'd at least keep the process a secret."

Amon raised an eyebrow at her and a few seconds passed in silence. Finally, he chuckled and tapped on her forehead. "Hmm, even if you say I am selfish, I thought you took yourself as someone special, someone who even this selfish me had a special place for. Did you change your mind?"

Raki averted her gaze this time. The conversation topic was shifting… but this wasn’t bad either.

"I… I don't see any way where I am different from, let's say, Robin. You call her your sister, and you do the same to me." She paused and sighed and then met his eyes. "If you are pretending to love her, then what makes me different?"

Raki swallowed in uncertainty and gave Amon a look with her lips thinned. "Who is to say you truly care for me?"

Amon went silent again, and the room suddenly grew terribly silent. This was… she was going through an existential crisis of some sort.

‘Was it the fact that Wyper now has more bounty than her?’

Amon pondered for a moment with his face expressionless. The silence stretched and he stood face to face with Raki.

Raki had gone through such thoughts and crises before too, but she quickly forgot about it in a few days and even a few hours. She had never actually consulted about this face to face with him. That was concerning for Amon.

His immediate reply, if he was in the mode of a joke, would have been "Why do you even think I care?", but this is not a joking matter. Moreover, it would be a… lie if he were to say he didn't care for her. Raki was certainly more than someone like Hancock, who was just a glorified meat bag if anything else.

Amon knew why that was the case. But will Raki understand if he explained outright? These days, there was no need for him to manipulate people, as he had the actual raw power to just get what he wanted. But the matter of fact was; Amon was still a manipulative scumbag on the inside.

He could… just lie to her, like always. Or actually, tell the truth.

Multiple thoughts ran by his brain, and he saw multiple futures where this could go wrong. If he took one wrong step… Raki might go rogue and he might have to do the unpleasant task of killing her.

Finally, he smiled at her as he decided on… one choice. It wasn't the best choice or the most logical choice, but it was something where he wouldn't need to make up lies entirely. He knew, even knowing the truth, Raki would be fine.

"Hm, I see the problem you are facing."

Amon said and Raki scowled. "Oh, you do?"

A deep sigh left Amon's lips before he looked deep into her eyes.

"Caring for someone is just… the reactions of some certain chemical blendings in our body. Sometimes, someone smiling at you can make your day bright, but at the same time someone else doing the same would make you scowl." Amon said. "Rather than something like soul or will, it's instead all a messy work of chemicals in our body. At least, for the most part."

"It can cause multiple problems, for exactly that reason, I have it turned off… mostly. Which I did using Seimei Kikan. Because of that, it's more or less impossible for me to care for someone deeply enough. Let alone come to love them."

This wasn’t a lie. He’s been doing it since the day he learned to control his body using the technique. Meaning, since he was a 5-year-old child. Nobody else other than him knew that, of course.

He turned his head to Raki, locking his gaze with her wide eyes. 

"Truth is, I can't trust people," Amon said. "I can indeed like them, but if I keep liking them, at one stage I would care enough to trust them too much. That's why, I stop myself from liking people too much, thus making it possible for me to not care and therefore not trust them too much." He stared at her scowling face. "You think that's edgy?" 

Amon chuckled. It was very edgy. But there were reasons behind it.

Looking at Raki’s shocked face, as she stared at him as if looking at an alien, Amon continued.

"There are reasons, of course. A human, from birth, is untrusting. The human brain sees everyone around it as an enemy, as people who it needs to stay away from. On top of that, for me the… 'main' reason for the lack of trust would be Wyper's father, Viper. I am sure you don't remember the story since you weren't even born then, but I guess you heard about it before?”

Raki thought for a second before nodding.

“I was almost killed by Viper, Wyper's father who is also my uncle, just a month after I was born. You can only imagine what emotional mutation a child’s brain, which I said is very cautious of others from birth, might go through in such a scenario." Amon shrugged and took a sip from the cup. “I blame that for my, well… Sociopathy.”

That wasn’t entirely true, but he couldn’t explain the actual truth without revealing his reincarnation. The actual truth for his lack of trust and care for anyone would be his past life, mostly. His soul was scarred to not care and trust anyone who wasn’t family, and the scar in his newborn brain just strengthened the resolve.

This scar, he could heal by self-therapy, by going deep inside his mind by manipulating his neurons and then healing it slowly. But it would destroy the whole foundation of who is “Amon”. It was like killing your own soul for a new one to take over you. You’d still be you, but not exactly.

That's why, even right now, he had his Semei Kikan working inside his body, moulding his hormones to keep calm. To just… not care.

"At the first stage of my life, I…” Amon sighed and looked outside again. “Well, I wouldn’t say I am not a monster already, but I would have been worse if not for Isa. She saved my life, took care of me, and even gave me the impression of an actual aunt. So please don’t assume I am just a computer running on codes.”

He then looked at her again.

"You, on the other hand…" Amon chewed on his lips for words, which shocked Raki. Amon never had to think so much. "...The first time we properly met, I had already decided to make you strong, stronger than anyone else on the tribe. So that you could one day be the perfect… ally to me."

"Tool, you mean." Raki said dryly.

"Oh, self-conscious. I like it."

"..."

Raki didn’t say anything and Amon continued with a chuckle. This was exactly why he liked her.

He sipped his coffee while casually staring at the sky.

"That continued for years, and by then, one would hope my mental scars and stuff would be healed and all, but I was already keeping my body’s chemicals under control. I couldn’t care less for anyone around me, other than Isa.” He gave her an expressionless look. “Even you were but a tool, as you said yourself.”

Raki looked hurt, but she swallowed it and thought about his wording. ‘Were’, he said.

Amon observed her face and a faint smile formed on his lips. “Then I learned something new. People care for their creation more than anything, even if they force themselves not to. A swordsmith can apparently get very attached to the sword he made, an intimate object, enough to sacrifice lives for it. And a father who never met his daughter ever before can get teary at their first meeting 13 years later. That's what had happened with you and me." 

Amon's words lingered in the room for minutes before he spoke again.

"Robin is… well, also a tool. But she is a tool made by someone else, and I just modified her a bit. You, on the other hand, are 100% made by me. Likewise in a sense, I am like a parent to you. Your whole existence… is here because of me."

He said in a casual tone as his last words rang in Raki’s head like a loud bell.

Minutes passed again, and Amon kept his eyes on her shaking fingers while sipping tea casually.

"So, the difference between me and Robin is that; she is a tool you don't care about, and I am a tool that… you are attached to.”

Amon stared at her again. “You underestimate your worth.” He finally said. “You are someone who bypassed whatever mental scar I have, and managed to get my true recognition.”

It was more of an achievement than Raki could ever know. Amon wouldn’t open up to anyone right now, now that he was about to take over the world; which would give even the people inside his own army a desire for the Throne of God just a few decades in.

For example, Tsumi was greedy. She was content with everything she had right now, but for how long? Even a mosquito can kill an elephant by sucking the blood on his brain, and anyone who Amon trusted would be in his brain, in his base.

Considering that, it is no less achievement than finding the One Piece that Raki was someone Amon trusted so much, someone he cared so much.

Looking at her sceptical expression, Amon threw the cup of coffee out the window and pinned her against the wall.

He looked down on her. "Imagine if I explained to Robin what she was to me, like I am doing to you. How do you think she will react?"

Raki stared at the hand pinning her shoulders and answered. "She will… probably go crazy? I don’t know. She would at the very least start to scream in horror and disbelief."

"And compared to that, what would you say your reactions are like?"

"..."

Amon took his hand back and stared at her eyes. "That is the difference between you and Robin. You won't care what I think of you. Even if I hate you like how a rat does a cat, you wouldn't hate me back."

Raki stayed silent, her face expressionless.

Amon sighed and rubbed his temple. The deep manipulative part of him didn’t want to be so open with her like this, but he couldn’t help it. "I… stopped thinking of you as a tool entirely after 2 years on the Moon. I turned off my passive mental mechanism for you, only you would be able to make me care for you more than I did by then already. But… it was too late by then, you know. By then, you were already obsessed with me, obsessed like a cub with a lion."

"..."

“That, miss, is why I love you so much.”

Suddenly, Raki raised her head up to meet his gaze with wide eyes.

"I might sound like I am… hoaxing, but I actually like your presence."

Raki's thin lips formed a barely recognisable smile and she heaved a huge breath that she was holding in until now.

"Hah... bastard." She rubbed her eyelids with her fingers. "Go die in a gutter."

She was clearly sad and on the verge of breaking at his open… confession. Amon doubted she would go rogue, but he knew Raki was almost about to go dry and empty as if someone proved to a priestess that her God is fake.

Amon smiled at her and rested his hand on her chin. “I won’t die, not yet. I have a universe to conquer, and then kill some flies in another dimension.”

Some flies would be some certain people from his past life, but that he would only do when he becomes Absolute in at least this universe. 

Raki couldn’t know what he meant, and just took it as a metaphor, and nodded.

She wiped her eyes with her sleeves and then walked closer to Amon. Amon knew what was about to happen, and he didn’t stop her. Raki tip-toed, now tall enough to meet his eyes, and then pressed her lips with his.

A deep sigh of relief left Amon. This at least meant he won’t have to kill her, the only person he could love without any reason forcing him. Even the care for Isa started to just repay her debts, but Raki was different.

Amon wrapped his hands around her, with her lips pressing on his as her lipstick painted his lips red.

After a minute, she raised her head to meet his as he stared at her a bit shocked.

"Don't pretend to be shocked." She grumbled. "Would you even be shocked if the sun collapsed?"

His shocked expression turned amused as he thought for a moment. "Hm… let's see, based on our sun's age, it would need another 3 billion years for it to actually die out. So yes, I will be shocked if it suddenly collapses now."

Raki stared at him briefly, her eyes teary from before, and kissed him again.

After this kiss broke, Amon wiped lipstick from his lips.

"Wait, did you put make-up on just to fuck me?"

Raki didn't say anything this time. So Amon walked to the centre of the room and pushed her down on the bed instead.

"Remember..." He said. "You made the first move."

She nodded slowly. 

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Author’s Note: Perfect. A twisted love story suits a villain the most. I like this development, most likely more than anyone else. Now, if I was really sadistic, I would have wanted to see Amon suffer… a bit. But very fortunately I am a gentle soul.

I still don’t know how their Lemon would turn out though…