Fellow Human
Verified Roado Rolla
I'm all for using weapons instead of just fists, but why a shock staff? I mean, is it any good vs anyone actually powerful?
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One Piece: New Life (One Piece fanfic)
- Thread starter AncientFunOP
- Start date
- Mature
-
- Tags
- one piece adventure fanfiction
It has the advantage that he can't be hurt by it if someone turns the tables and also for such as Buggy contact is enough to harm so knocking pieces away rather than breaking them isn't an issue.
Of course Buggy is trying to keep a low profile and is out of shape but we know he's actually more dangerous than he pretends given where he previously travelled.
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Daonexus
Seeker of the true Dao of waifus
- Location
- Hyderabad, India
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I am just needlessly worrying because some authors just character hog and add all people to the crew
Fellow Human
Verified Roado Rolla
Buggy pulling a Darth Jar Jar is canon?
Like This Bites which I couldn't follow after letting it stack due to too many characters. I forgot who's who and who and their tehniques.
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- Location
- Definitely Earth
- Location
- Germany
For me personally the characters in "This Bites" grew on me and i wouldn't mind if we get some additional crew members in this story similar to it.
Luffy shouldn't gain like 20 additional members for the main crew, with that many we as a reader would start to not connect to them to deeply i guess.
This is not the canon story and the we shouldn't expect things to happen exactly like it did there.
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- Location
- Germany
Question does this have a discord server?
Cause i think it could work out well on one
I firmly believe the following/community of this story will become big
The story already is going strong with each chapter and the most important thing is that it has that One Piece feeling/vibe whatever you want to call it
Cause i think it could work out well on one
I firmly believe the following/community of this story will become big
The story already is going strong with each chapter and the most important thing is that it has that One Piece feeling/vibe whatever you want to call it
Extrapolated at least he did go all the way as a young man.
- Location
- Definitely Earth
Thank you! As for the discord, not yet. I'll make one
- Location
- Somewhere
Well, yeah, this is not set in the canon One Piece manga. That much is really obvious, it's probably why I don't mind how the divergences, characters, and protagonist behave. The upfront nature of explaining to Luffy that his "fictional" world is not railroaded into "canon" and Luffy is not in fact "safe" because he has canon as his walkthrough and maturity.
The Ace meeting will be interesting as I can believe that got butterflied away. Dragon and Garp likely knew about Luffy, and until Luffy's bounty is posted there is always the possibility Ace could learn Luffy vanished becoming the only "brother" alive. And if Ace still meets Luffy in Alabasta, that will be interesting too, probably hard to write. So many ways to take the encounter, I can't see this Luffy being able to replicte the canon encounter as that Luffy did. This Luffy feels too worn. This Luffy wears seastone, this Luffy can cook, this Luffy prefers little sleep, this Luffy can control his appetite, this Luffy is more perceptive, this Luffy lost the joy. Yes, Luffy is still going on the adventure, but the adventure feels like a job and a checklist with the main goal "Get strong" rather than "One Piece/ADVENTURE".
I love this story, just puting into words the feelings I'm getting.
Kuja Arc was an eyeopener on the way future arcs can play out, as well as how the meta knowledge reveals can bite Luffy's ass in addition to showcasing the power level differences some more.
Buggy will be fun no matter how that will play out. Buggy, a New World veteran and Roger pirate, slumming it in East Blue, related to Shanks. Facing a version of Luffy with metaknowledge. Luffy could honestly try to dodge the Buggy encounter on purpose as the only reason to face Buggy and do anything to Buggy is because Luffy had to play hero unless circumstances changed so that he wouldn't be a "hero" as the actual reason he fights Buggy. Buggy is harming people, none of those people are currently Luffy's friends being harmed, although they could be that. One odd thing is that Shanks sails the East Blue. At one point or another Buggy and Shanks could have met in the East Blue.
Arlong is Nami's chain, those cat pirates are Usopp's conflict ball, Buggy is a typical pirate. If Buggy never leaves East Blue... Oda's safety wheel on the plot is off it's spot. Buggy has always served the plot in some way, the Marineford arc had that camera crew element happpening, Luffy's first DF fight.
I think the most interesting butterfly element however will be in the crew. The one person likely to read Luffy like a book the second Luffy tells any story is likely to be Usopp, not specifically because Usopp is a liar, but because Usopp has a functional imagination capable of analyzing information to get a random result. Usopp was the ship gadgeteer before Franky, showing a level of mental gymnastics unexpected for someone from East Blue. If Usopp had been trained as a shipbuilder he might actually have been able to save Merry even though Merry's case was terminal. Which is gonna be so much fun if Luffy is taken by surprise by Usopp's reactions to himself. Luffy comes in with expectations of what Usopp is like, and all Usopp does is stare at Luffy with tears in his own eyes at what Luffy's body is saying, or gets utterly scared at what Luffy's body is saying. Pirate life is no joke, and neither is regular life in One Piece World. I'm also willing to bet yes that Usopp has some medical knowledge and might be able to read a glimpse of Luffy's physical training practices from Luffy's body.
Zoro might get pissed at just how much weaker he is compared to Luffy. The whole crew might come to depend too much on Luffy. Chopper might get a bounty higher than less than a thousand beri. Lots of fun times ahead.
- Pronouns
- Male
*Goes to hit next threadmark* Aww I've read all of the ones that were out
. But for real though I loved every bit of this! Keep up the good work!
. But for real though I loved every bit of this! Keep up the good work!
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
you know, you could fix one of Many Oda's mistakes by giving Crocodile at least Busoshoku haki.
I ripped through this like a starving man and I am so happy I did. I have not read a story that captures the Feel of One Piece like this since "This Bites" and I am hyped beyond belief for the shenanigans to come. Because normal Luffy is a force of nature, and he was unequivocally a high wis low int build. This Luffy has another lifetime to draw from, more education than literally 80% of the people in his entire planet, has context to and is in place to rip open a yes amount of state secrets, and has more motivation than just the One Piece. This is a Luffy that appreciates his nakama before the time skip. Has been training since the word go, and is not going to let anyone of his crew fall behind. No one is ready for him and I look forward to the sheer mess he will make now that he is finally back in an area that is not perma set at prepare to die difficulty. Because you even got the tunnel vision right dear author and I can't wait till a new threadmark pops up.
Chapter 9 - The Navigator and The Swordsman
- Location
- Definitely Earth
Chapter 9 - The Navigator and The Swordsman
Nami peeked from behind a tree as she spied on the pirate ship that was sitting at a hidden cove of the island she was on. 'Finally! Looks like tomorrow's the day!' she sighed in relief when she saw the pirates gearing up with swords, guns, and cannons, looking like they were getting ready to go on a raid. She had tailed these pirates for a whole week, studying whether their treasury was on their ship or if they had a base somewhere else, studying who was in charge, how strong they were, and other things which helped her determine if she could steal from them without getting caught or not.
"You filthy landlubbers!" the captain of the pirate crew yelled, "Tomorrow morning, we pillage!" The other pirates cheered, "Tomorrow, we get so rich that we can eat till our stomachs explode!" another cheer, "Bury ourselves in booze!…" Nami tuned him out getting the feeling that his rant was going to go on for a while. She had the confirmation that they would be doing the raid the next morning, and that was all she needed, so she left.
She made her way through the thick forest with no need of a map to know where she was heading, and thirty minutes later, reached a town. She bought some food, went to the inn she had rented a room in, took a bath, made herself a hot cup of tea and then sat and stared out of the second-story window her room was on.
The town was called Inizio and even though it was late at night, the town was bustling with activity as people mingled at the many stalls that sold food, clothes, accessories and all sort of things.
The joyful atmosphere was heightened by the lively music that spilled out from a nearby tavern, along with loud cheers and raucous laughter as people shared stories and drinks late into the night. All in all, the word 'happy' was best used to describe the folks of Inizio, and in contrast to all the joyful people, Nami was staring at them all with a sad melancholic look.
'This whole place is gonna get destroyed tomorrow morning' she thought with sadness as she leaned on the windowsill. The Leaper Pirates, who she was tailing for the past week, would be pillaging this village early next morning and doing what pirates did best - destroy.
She could try to stop it by informing the Marines but knew from experience that it wouldn't do anything. This wasn't the first time she had found pirates who wanted to raid a place in advance after all. She thought back to the first time she had hoped the Marines would do something to help her and she had flashbacks of Arlong destroying five battleships like they were nothing.
After that, she had resolved to never ask for help, but that was with Arlong. During her early runs, she would sometimes find that a pirate crew was attacking some town in advance and had tried to warn the town. The first time, she had gone to the village chief and informed him that a pirate crew was planning an attack on them and the chief had believed her. He had called the Marines but they didn't care and dismissed the information as made-up, and as a result, she had seen many people die the next day. She only learned much later that the Marines were bribed by the pirates to not interfere with the raid, which had shocked her.
She had tried a few more times back when she was still really young and she failed every time as the Marines were either in cahoots with the pirates, or dismissed her claims as a young girl's silly delusions. If the village people trusted her and tried to escape, the pirates preemptively attacked and sometimes, it led to worse situations.
After some time, she had lost confidence and hope that she could ever help anyone, so all she did now was use the opportunity to steal so that the people closest to her could be freed. It was usually easiest to steal from pirates when they are in the middle of a raid as they would be off the ship, thus, leaving the treasury less guarded. She usually decided how to steal for each pirate crew separately and for a big crew like the Leaper pirates which had almost 50 members, this was the most effective plan.
It still didn't feel good though. Knowing that such a happy town would be destroyed the next day while she knew about it and could do nothing made her feel guilty.
There was a sudden crowd forming right outside a restaurant that caught her attention where people were yelling the letters 'YMCA' with glee, but hearing that only made her mood dip further.
'I'm sorry, but I'm not strong enough to help you…' she apologized before sighing and closing the window, shutting out the joyful atmosphere as she lay on her bed.
She shook the depressing thoughts away and thought of what she should do after stealing from the Leaper pirates the next day. The Alvida pirates were nearby, so they were her next target. She had heard that they raided cruise ships mostly, so all she had to do was find out which cruise ship they would attack in advance, get on it and when they did attack, she could slip into the pirate ship, steal all she wanted and escape. It would take a couple of weeks to gather the information, but it was pretty easy.
But she worried about what came after. She was running out of pirates to steal from and these days, the pirates she could target were poor themselves. It was useless to keep stealing such measly amounts as it would take a very long time to gather the 100 million if she kept going like this.
"Is it time I headed to the Grand Line?" she wondered aloud with a sigh. She had heard only rumours of that place which basically went something like 'Terrifying, death, scared, never going back again, pirate graveyard'
It would be a huge risk sure, but just one trip to the Grand Line could be enough for her to gather the rest of the money she needed to buy her village and get her life back. She just had to be careful like always and not take too many risks and she would be fine. 'It would be nice to have someone with me though…' she thought but discarded it instantly. 'No friends. I fight alone…'
She sighed thinking it over but ultimately decided that she would head to the Grand Line after she stole from the Alvida pirates. She had heard a rumour that the Marine Base in Shellstown had a map to the Grand Line, and thus, her next two destinations were also set.
—
The next morning, Nami coughed and wheezed as she hauled a bag of treasure behind her through the smoking remains of the pirate ship she was on. 'Ugh why did things suddenly go so wrong?' she huffed with irritation. Everything was going well until the damn ship exploded out of nowhere.
As planned, she had snuck onto the ship and was waiting for the pirates to leave the ship to go raid the town. They had started off by firing cannonballs at the town, so she stayed still waiting for it to be over. But suddenly, the ship lurched violently which was followed by a sudden explosion and everything went to hell.
Apparently, the gunpowder in the below deck had somehow caught on fire and had caused the explosion which had destroyed the ship and it had begun to slowly sink. Chaos had ensued as pirates ran around in a panic trying to run away from the fire and smoke, but ever the opportunist, Nami had used the chaos to make her way to the treasury of the ship.
The walls of the treasury room were blown wide open, so she didn't even have to break in, but a fire in an adjacent room was quickly filling it up with smoke. She didn't care as she had hastily started filling up a bag with treasure.
Halfway through unfortunately, some of the calmer members of the pirate crew, also having had the same thought of getting the treasure, came to the treasury room too and thus, she was now running away from them by purposefully going through smoke-filled regions of the ship hoping to lose them.
'I'm gonna kill whoever blew up the ship!' she vowed with irritation as she finally made it to the upper deck, coughing and wheezing hard. She collapsed to her knees taking in heavy gulps of some much needed fresh air, but she soon heard voices very close to her.
"Who's she?" / "I don't know" / "Intrude-"
She looked up to see three pirates through her teary eyes and quickly realizing that these pirates didn't yet know that there was a thief on board, composed herself and waved at them with a smile.
"Oh, hey," she wheezed, still coughing as she struggled to bring her breathing under control. "I'm the new recruit that the boss just picked up!"
"Woah really?! Boss finally recruited a girl?!"
'Good, these guys are morons!' Nami smiled as she slowly looked around. Most of the pirates had already jumped ship and the ship was also breaking apart. She was at the back of the ship, which was still relatively intact as the fire still hadn't spread till there and luckily she spotted a couple of dinghies still on board. She hauled the bag of treasure that she hadn't let go of even through all the smoke and fire, and made her way to the dinghy while making conversation with the pirates, "I'll meet you on the island. We can steal all the treasure we want there and drink all we want!"
"Yeah!" the idiot pirates chorused happily.
'Good!' Nami applauded herself as she put the bag of treasure inside the dinghy and was about to push it into the sea to make her escape, but another pirate who was chasing her earlier showed up.
"You thief! That's our treasure you're stealing there!"
"No no, she's a new recruit" the three idiot pirates explained with grins and Nami was hoping the new one was also an idiot, but unfortunately, he wasn't.
"Idiots!" he yelled at the three before bringing his sword out and pointing it at Nami. "Someone blew up the ship to steal the treasure! It's this bitch!"
"Now now, you can ask the boss yourself. I really am the new recruit," Nami placated backing away as her hands hovered over her thigh holster where her bo staff was.
"Liar!" the guy yelled and lunged at her with his sword. Nami, already expecting it, ducked down, pulled out and assembled her bo staff, stepped diagonally across him and swung her staff at the back of his knees. The pirate staggered to a knee losing his balance and before he could even process what had happened, Nami twirled the staff around herself and smashed it on the back of his head.
"Gakh!" he fell down unconscious. Nami didn't have time to celebrate as the three idiot pirates would attack her now too, so quickly turned to face them… but was bewildered to find that all three were down too.
"What?" she looked around not understanding how the three had been taken out but hearing more shouts of 'There's a thief on board!', she didn't delve on it and quickly pushed the dinghy into the sea. She jumped into it and soon, she was rowing away as fast as she could away from the ship.
"Phew! That was a close one" Nami let out a sigh of relief thinking she was in the clear but not even a couple of meters away from the sinking ship, her dinghy lurched suddenly. She let out a yelp holding onto the side of the boat so that she wouldn't fall over while her eyes searched for what caused the sudden jerk and realized someone had jumped into her dinghy. 'Shit!'
She quickly pulled out her staff, turned to face the person and locked eyes with a straw hat-wearing black-haired teen standing at the bow of the dinghy. Thinking he was a pirate who had jumped from the burning ship, she was going to swing at him and take him out by surprise but froze when she saw the widest and most joyous smile she had ever seen on a person's face.
———
The previous night
"Goodbye, Big bro Luffy! See you tomorrow!" a few kids chorused together with excited grins as they waved at him and went away with their parents.
Luffy waved at them with a smile but he was more focused on studying each face of the dispersing crowd to see if he could spot the faces of Zoro or Nami. He let out a tired sigh when he didn't and went back to the restaurant where Makinowas waiting.
"Didn't find them?" Makino asked sadly as she saw the unsatisfied look on Luffy's face.
"Nope. Maybe they're not here" Luffy sighed as he studied the plethora of maps littered on the table. There were a ton of markings, routes, notes, etc., on the maps which he had made and he added another note of 'Not here?' next to a town called Inizio.
"It was still fun watching those kids dance though," Makino chuckled, "You sure have picked up a lot of catchy songs now," she said before humming a tune.
"Yeah, it's cool huh?" Luffy grinned. The two were dining at an open restaurant and when Luffy had seen a group of kids playing just outside, he had joined in and made them dance to YMCA in the hopes that a large crowd would form. If Nami and Zoro were around, then he was hoping that they would be attracted by the crowd and show up too, but sadly, they hadn't.
"You said Zoro should show up in Shellstown any day now right?" Makino asked as she pointed at said town on the map.
"Yeah, so it actually doesn't matter now I guess. The last two weeks sure were a massive waste of time huh? Just been going on a wild goose chase"
"Hey, don't say that," Makino said in a chiding tone, "If we weren't there, a lot of people would have lost their lives at those islands we stopped at you know"
"Hmm yeah, I guess that's the one good thing that came out of this," Luffy said as he pondered over the journey so far.
It had already been two weeks since they had left Dawn Island and they had spent that time searching for Zoro and Nami. Zoro, with his wonderful sense of direction, was unpredictable as he was drifting from place to place without any specific directions and the only clue Luffy had regarding his location was that he would be somewhere near Shellstown. Nami, on the other hand, was actually easy to track if he made some assumptions.
Technically, with her skillful navigation, she could pretty much be anywhere in East Blue, but she wasn't just drifting from place to place like Zoro was. She actually had a specific objective of stealing from pirates and didn't just randomly drift from place to place to find them, but actually made plans and targeted pirate crews. So, all Luffy had to do to find her was to find out which pirate crews she would target.
Back in Loguetown, he had gone through every single bounty poster and gotten a list of all the pirates in East Blue. Luffy first eliminated all the bounties of less than a million as they wouldn't have much treasure and Nami would either have already stolen from them or they weren't worth the effort. Nami was looking for the map to the Grand Line during the Orange Town arc as she wasn't finding any more pirates with enough treasure in East Blue anymore, so that was a safe assumption to make. That eliminated a ton of pirates from the list.
In Loguetown, during the journey to Dawn Island, and the last two weeks since he started his journey, at every island they came across, he had asked bounty hunters, journalists, Marines, and even some villagers about which pirates were usually spotted where especially those that were spotted around Shellstown and neighbouring regions. He had also broken into Marine bases and stolen documents which had detailed reports of pirate sightings, among other things. He even scoured newspapers which had thus given him a ton of information about a lot of pirates.
Logically, if he was a thief, he would target pirate crews that are close by in one single sweep instead of stealing from pirates that were far away from another. So, since Nami would be targeting Alvida, it would make sense for her to also target any close-by pirates too if they were worth it. Thus, if a pirate was usually spotted somewhere far away from Shellstown, he eliminated them from the list and considered only the ones close to Shellstown.
And finally, he had narrowed down the list of pirates Nami could target to just three crews - The Alvida pirates, the Leaper pirates and the Bulldog pirates. Again, if Nami was targeting some pirate that was somewhere far away from Shellstown, then all his analysis would be moot, but Luffy thought that this cluster of three pirate crews that were close by would attract her attention. She usually only went on short trips as she had to draw maps for Arlong and couldn't be away from Cocoyashi for long trips, so she would target as many pirates as she could in short intervals of time, and thus, choose pirates that were closer.
Just like him, she also got her information from asking around on the seas and would have probably done a very similar analysis as him too. Also, she went straight to Shellstown after stealing from Alvida in the story, so she would have targeted the other two pirate crews before her.
And thus, the day he had started his journey, he set a course to find where the Bulldog pirates were last spotted and after visiting two islands, finally found them. He had waited on that island, hoping Nami would show up, but the Bulldog pirates had started attacking the village on the second day he was there, and thus, he had stepped in and taken care of them. After that, only the Leaper pirates were left, and thus, he had come to Inizio as they were last spotted near here.
This island was also one of the closest islands to Shellstown, so he thought that Zoro could also be here. He had left five weeks earlier than his story counterpart, and two weeks had gone by, so it was currently three weeks before his birthday. In the story, Zoro would have been tied up to the cross for three weeks before story Luffy shows up, so this was the around the time Zoro would show up in Shellstown, so he was either already in Shellstown or somewhere close by.
"This is some complex analysis, Luffy…" Makino said bringing him out of his thoughts and found her staring at him and all the notes he had written on the maps. "It's unbelievable how much you've learned… You can even make such a detailed analysis now. You remember that your head would go red and actually start steaming when you thought just a bit too hard before right?" Makino said that last part with a giggle.
"Shishi yeah. Leo actually had a theory about that. Since I'm made of rubber, the neurons firing in the brain are slower and thus, I'm not able to think fast or retain a lot of information because my brain processing speed is slower"
"Hmm, but if your brain is made of rubber," Makino pondered with a finger on her chin, "wouldn't no neurons fire and send you into a vegetative state as soon as you ate your fruit?"
"I mean, you can squish my face flat, so my brain does stretch… but I guess it's not complete rubber? At least it's not rubber enough that it still allows neurons to fire? There was a time when I was wearing sea stone and was out of stamina as I hadn't had much to eat, and I was actually able to get electrocuted then. But now, I can't get shocked. So, my body's rubberiness? does vary…so who knows?"
"I see. And since you wore sea stone, you became less rubbery and thus, your brain is processing faster, can retain more and even think more clearly now?"
"That was a theory yeah. I'm really good at battles, right? So Leo had theorized that since my adrenaline is high and blood is getting pumped faster during battles, my brain is also working faster and so, my overworking brain processing is equivalent to a normal brain processing. And thus, I'm good at battles"
"So you're saying you would have been a genius if you didn't eat your fruit?" Makino giggled amused, "You were pretty stupid even before you ate your fruit"
"Yeah yeah," Luffy smiled, "It's just a theory. Who knows what the truth is… At the end of the day, only one theory seems to fit when someone tries to explain devil fruits powers"
"And what is that, Professor Luffy?"
"Devil fruits are bullshit," Luffy said nodding sagely causing Makino to giggle. The two had talked a lot over the past two weeks and Makino had soon learned that Luffy had a lot of nonsense in his head ranging from superheroes to time-travelling doctors. And at the same time, she saw him collecting information from various people and sources, plotting routes on maps and analysing where his supposed crewmates were. He still absolutely sucked at navigating though, which she took care of.
Other than that, he also knew of so many scientific concepts and one night, he had gone on a very long explanation about how devil fruits might work, which included words like electromagnetism, black bodies, dielectric constants… and so many other things, and she had no idea if he was just making up words or if there was actually something like that. She had even started playfully calling him 'Professor Luffy' when he was explaining stuff, 'Detective Luffy' when he was investigating where his crewmates were and 'Nonsense Luffy' when he told random stories.
At the end of the day, Luffy had changed a lot and she liked a lot of the changes. But there were a few changes that she absolutely loathed to the point that she wanted to beat him up. She wanted to confront him about it but she didn't know how exactly to navigate that conversation, so was waiting for the right time.
"Anyway," Luffy said changing the topic, "I'll go search for these Leaper Pirates tomorrow and we'll wait here for a couple of days. If nothing happens, we'll go to Alvida. I think she should be somewhere around here" he said tracing a region on the map.
"To get…um Coby?"
"Yep!"
"And then go to Shellstown where Zoro will show up. I got that right?"
"Yep"
"If you already knew where he was, why all this? Couldn't we have just waited in Shellstown?" Makino asked perplexed. As to how he knew where they were, she had asked him the first time he brought it up but he had deflected the questions or only given her vague answers. After that, she didn't pry and just accepted it, thinking that someone was giving him information.
"I'm more worried about Nami actually. Zoro, I'll somehow find him even if he doesn't show up at Shellstown as he's famous… but Nami?" he sighed with worry. "…either way, we'll continue finding her after we pick up Zoro," he trailed off not saying anything more and Makino sighed accepting his vague answers again. As for the real reasons Luffy had left earlier and was searching for his crewmates, there were several.
There were selfish reasons like him wanting the start of his journey to be different that what happened in the story. A lot of his crewmates were in specific places and he would meet them under specific situations which he knew he wouldn't be able to change much, but at least for Zoro and Nami, he could change it. He wanted to meet them under different circumstances than what happened in the story. And that's why even though Zoro would be showing up in Shellstown any day now, he was hoping he would still run into him on Inizio.
Another selfish reason was that he wanted to play detective and see if he could find them by himself.
And lastly, the actual major reason that had made him even think of leaving early was because of some of the pirate bounty posters he had seen back in Loguetown. A couple of pirates he had seen made him think, 'These guys exist? But wouldn't that mean that they could also be real? But how would that work?… Wait a minute… Oh No! What about Nami then?!'
He was downright terrified of the conclusions he had come to and just the thought of waiting for five weeks to get the confirmation if he was right or not had him going crazy. If his conclusions were correct, then he would definitely need the extra time but more importantly, he wanted to see Nami as fast as possible. And thus, he had left early.
As for the consequences of leaving early, he didn't care much. He knew many of his adventures relied a lot on them showing up at the right place at the right time, especially on the Grand Line. If he left earlier or later, then he would miss Vivi, miss the ship falling from the sky, miss the Knock-Up stream, and so many more events, but he wasn't worried. They were definitely not leaving East Blue until Zoro got his fight with Mihawk and that was a good equalizer in syncing up the time periods.
—
"AHHHH! PIRATE ATTACK!"
Luffy was woken up by loud booms and screams the next morning. He sat up on top of a tree where he was sleeping and lazily looked towards the shore where there were three pirate ships firing their cannons at the town. He sighed when he saw the Jolly Roger and recognized them as the Leaper Pirates. 'Great! If they're already attacking, Nami won't show up…'
He heard screams of people and used Soru and airwalk to get to the shore as quickly as possible. Makino was at an inn further inside the town so she would be safe. Panic had ensued as people were screaming and running away from the shore and just as Luffy got there, the pirate ships fired another salvo of cannonballs.
Luffy just leapt high into the air placing himself right in the way of one of the cannonballs and just as it was about to hit him, caught it in one hand, gripped it tight and used its momentum to rotate in place, thereby redirecting the projectile, and launched it back at the ship when he made a 360-degree turn.
It missed but he quickly airwalked to the other cannonballs in less than a second and threw them back at the ship, two of which crashed into one of the ships' hull, which somehow caused a chain reaction as the ship suddenly exploded.
"Oops?" Luffy landed back on the ground just as the explosion happened wondering what had caused it. He was utterly bored as he saw the other two ships stop firing, probably thinking that someone was firing at them, but confused when they didn't see anyone. The previous islands he had been to also had one or the other problem in which he had gotten involved, but any opponent was so boring and weak that he didn't even want to fight them.
"Luffy!" Makino called out and he saw her near a destroyed building, helping other people and the group of kids he had befriended the previous day too.
Ten minutes later, all the townspeople at the shore had vacated the area with Luffy helping people trapped in debris get out, while the two pirate ships stayed near the destroyed one. He sighed watching the ships and was about to go destroy them too but his eyes caught a flash of orange and he froze.
Suddenly, the shine in his eyes came back, his heart rate skyrocketed through the roof and his body started trembling with joy when he saw an orange-haired girl burst out from the smoking insides of the destroyed ship, coughing and wheezing as she hauled a big bag behind her. "Nami…" he breathed feeling a massive weight lift off his chest. "She's here…"
He saw her collapse to her knees coughing and wheezing and realized in horror that he had almost hurt her. Three pirates were present where she was and his hand automatically picked up debris from the collapsed building and aimed it at them.
He waited though knowing she could handle it on her own and his lips widened into a smile when she talked her way out of it and was about to make her escape on a dinghy. Unfortunately, another pirate came out and Luffy started airwalking to her instantly.
Nami took out one pirate in just two strikes from her staff with amazing grace, but the other three were about to attack her from behind, so he threw the large rock in his hand at them. It hit one of the pirates, who crashed into the other two, thus taking all three out at once. Nami seemed a bit confused when she turned to face them and saw all three knocked out, but she shrugged it off and pushed the dinghy into the sea before jumping in and paddling away.
He reached her then and she was watching the sea when he dropped into her dinghy. Luffy studied his navigator closely as she let out a yelp losing balance, but was quickly back on her feet with her bo staff pulled out and locked eyes with him. She had her trademark orange hair and was wearing a white shirt with an orange miniskirt with white rings on either side. As the two stared at each other as if in a daze, he noticed how chocolaty brown her eyes were.
"Hi!" Luffy happily greeted her and only then did Nami come out of her confused daze and instantly swung her staff at him yelling "Get off my boat!"
Luffy dodged it and looked at her amusedly, "Calm down, will you? It's not like I'm one of those pirates that you just stole from"
"What are you then?!" she asked noticing that he was in fact not one of the Leaper pirates. She had observed each of their crew members over the past week and she didn't remember seeing the man before her.
"Monkey D. Luffy! Nice to meetcha!"
"I'm not asking for your name! What are you doing on my boat?!"
"Just dropped in?"
She swung at staff at him again, "That's not an answer! Get off my boat!"
He again dodged it and Nami grew increasingly frustrated, "What do you want?!"
"Ah, nothing. Just wanted to apologize that's all"
"Apologize? For what?"
"That ship blowing up," he said pointing at the burning and sinking ship behind them, "I'm kinda responsible"
"It was you?!" Nami grew angrier as she swung her staff at him again with full force. Luffy didn't bother dodging this time, thinking she was going to keep doing it anyway, while Nami expected him to fall over after which she could trip him into the sea, but both heard a loud CRACK! as soon as the staff made contact.
The future captain and navigator both stared at the staff that was now broken in two with one piece dangling off of the other before looking up at each other again.
"Good strong swing," Luffy nodded approvingly giving her a thumbs up, "It wouldn't have broken if there was no strength behind it"
"You broke my staff!" Nami snapped grabbing him by the neck of his vest.
"I didn't! It just broke by itself!" Luffy argued trying to placate her. 'Damn, I messed up our first meeting…'
"The hell does that even mean?!" she shook him angrily, "I've had that staff for years and now you broke it! Pay me back!"
"Okay okay, I'm sorry. I'll pay for it"
"It costs 5 million berries!"
"Pfft~" Luffy couldn't help but laugh at the absurd price.
"Don't laugh!" Nami yelled shaking him by his neck, "I'm not joking!"
"Wait, did it really cost that much?"
"Yes!" 'Is he really that gullible?' "Now, pay me back!"
"Okay okay, calm down for a bit," Luffy said with an amused smile, "Look what's happening around you"
"Huh?" Nami was confused but when she did look around, she paled in horror when she saw the other two pirate ships flanking them from either side, essentially sandwiching them, while all the pirates were peeking over the deck staring at them with anger and some even had guns pointed right at them.
"Oh hey, boys," Nami said letting go of Luffy and waving at them with a smile, but was panicking on the inside while also thinking of how to get out of the situation.
"It's her, boss!" one of the pirates yelled pointing at her, "That's the thieving bitch who blew up the ship and stole all our treasure!"
"I did no such thing!" Nami snapped as she really hadn't blown up the ship.
"Then what's that bag over there?" the supposed captain calmly asked pointing inside her dinghy where the bag of treasure lay.
'Crap!' "Oh that…" she quickly looked for a way out and when she the strawhat bastard smiling at her, she saw a scapegoat. "It's this guy!" she said pointing at Luffy, "He's the one who blew up the ship and was taking all the treasure and running away! I was trying to stop him!"
"Oh? Is that true?" the captain asked.
"Well, I was the one who blew up the ship"
"See?!" Nami yelled pointing at him, "I was trying to stop him!"
"Just kill them both and get the treasure back" the captain ordered not buying her story and Nami's heart sank. She was sandwiched between two pirate ships, with multiple guns being pointed at her and a stranger in her boat whose motives she didn't know. Is this how she was going to go out? She had been so careful all this time and she was so close to gathering the 100 million… and this stupid situation was how she was going to die?
She, of course, didn't give up and was planning to jump into the sea but before she could even take one step, she suddenly felt the straw hat teen grabbing her hand stopping her.
Before she could protest, Luffy pointed at the sky and yelled, "Hey look! It's a Brontosaurus!"
All the pirates' eyes whipped upwards while Luffy pulled Nami into his arms, scaled the side of the ship, and jumped into the middle of pirates before using Soru to get behind all the pirates and entered the door that led to the below deck.
For Nami, it was like a series of slides. One instant she was in Luffy's embrace in the dinghy, the next instant, she was on the side of the ship where Luffy was scaling it with her in his hands, the next instant she was right in the middle of the numerous pirates on the ship, and before she even processed the image, she was staring at a staircase going down.
"Wha?" she muttered disoriented for a second before realizing that she was at the back of the pirate ship at the top of the stairs which led to the below deck. Somehow, she had moved from a dinghy in the sea facing a bunch of pirates to behind the pirates on their own ship within moments. She became bewildered when she saw the straw hat-wearing teen just behind her closing the door and pulling her down the stairs.
"H-how did we get here?" she whispered to him.
"Hm? I ran"
"You…ran?" Nami mumbled not understanding, "What do you mean you ran?"
Luffy stopped and faced her acting like he was confused, "Umm… It's just like walking, but faster"
"I know that, idiot!" Nami snapped growing irritated.
"Hey! I hear something below deck! Go check it out!" a voice said from outside and Nami clamped her own mouth shut realizing she had raised her voice. Hearing steps coming towards them from outside, she quickly started looking around for a place to hide. They were in a corridor, so she started running through it while looking for a room to hide in and Luffy followed behind her but much to her irritation, he was laughing at her.
"Don't laugh!" she whisper-hissed, "It's your fault!"
"Why? You're the one shouting and getting their attention"
"It's because you said stupid things!"
"Shishishishi"
"Wait a minute!" Nami suddenly stopped, "My treasure! I left it back in the din-"
"You mean this?" Luffy asked lifting up the bag of treasure in his hand.
"My treasure!" she exclaimed happily snatching it away from his hands. She then realized that he had hauled it all the way from the dinghy and grew cautious of him.
"This is mine!" she glared at him while hugging the bag.
"Yes, it's yours"
"You're not getting it!"
"I never asked for it" Luffy chuckled.
"…Why did you bring it with you then?"
"Hmm I saw you holding onto the bag even though you were choking on the smoke earlier and even while fighting that pirate, so I know it's precious to you"
"…Oh," Nami blinked. "Thank you then…" she said but was still suspicious of him and didn't let her guard down. The pirates were after him too, so at least until they were out of danger, they were in the same boat. She heard steps again, so again started moving trying to find a place to hide.
"Hey hey, I'm Luffy," Luffy introduced himself again as he ran behind her, "What's your name?"
"Now's not the time for introductions. We need to escape from here first," she said but then seemed to have a brilliant idea, "We're inside the ship!"
"…yeah?"
"I can steal more treasure from this ship!"
"Ah right," Luffy smiled already seeing her greediness for money trumping all her other worries. The two saw a few shadows coming from around the corner, so Nami quickly opened the closest door and got inside it with Luffy following behind her.
She took a moment to take a breath while also listening to the outside and groaned when she heard more pirates walking through the corridor.
"Where are they?!" / "Where the hell did they vanish?!" / "Search for them! I'm sure they're hiding here somewhere!"
While Nami was making plans on how to steal the treasure and escape, Luffy was having a hard time holding himself back as he wanted to talk about a lot of things with her, but he didn't want to spook her. He had to watch what he said to her and not blurt out stuff he had no way of knowing, so he was taking it slow and easy. He at least wanted her to introduce herself as he was sure he would slip up and call her Nami any second now, so he asked her again, "What's your name?"
"Now's not the time! We need to slip out from here first" she said making sure to keep her voice low.
"Oh c'mon, let's do introductions first"
"Shut up!" she snapped facing him, "And it was you who blew up the ship?! I almost died you know!"
"Ah sorry… didn't mean to do that"
"That's two you owe me now! My staff and almost killing me"
"Shishi sure, your staff was 5 million, so almost killing you costs me how much?"
"1 billion!" she declared causing Luffy to laugh out loud. Nami quickly clamped his mouth shut hissing, "Keep quiet, idiot!" which only made him more amused.
"Okay okay…but you do realize that the amount you're saying is absurd right?"
Nami sighed calming down, "Yeah yeah… but you do owe me though," she then held the neck of his vest again and in a threatening tone said, "And I'm not letting you go until you compensate me"
"Sure" Luffy happily chirped having no intention of separating from her.
Seeing the carefree Luffy actually managed to calm her down and she took a deep breath. The pirates seemed to be going away, so she relaxed and thinking that she could use the strawhat teen to steal the treasure, she finally introduced herself. "I'm Nami. I'm a pirate thief and you're gonna help me steal the treasure from this ship. That's a start at making it up to me"
"Sure!"
She grew suspicious at how easily he had accepted her proposal, "What were you doing blowing up the ship anyway?"
"Oh they were firing at the town, so I put a stop to it"
"You fired a cannon back at them?"
"In a way, yeah… but the ship blew up out of nowhere. I have no idea what happened"
"Idiots probably kept a lantern or something near the gunpowder which got knocked out when you fired at them"
"Maybe"
'So he lives there and is trying to protect the town?' she concluded wrongly. She wanted to ask more but the outside became completely silent and she slowly opened to door to peek out and found that the coast was clear.
"Okay, come on. Don't make a sound" she said and led the way cautiously looking around every corner while Luffy walked behind her just enjoying the fact that he was finally with a crewmate. They soon reached where Nami said the treasury was and she became happy when she found no one guarding it.
"It's my lucky day" she smiled as she fiddled with the lock on the door and within a minute, had it open. She happily opened the door but froze when she found a pirate sitting inside with a drink in his hand. He seemed to be drunk and barely sober, so she let out a sigh of relief.
The pirate groggily raised his head and asked, "Who are you? And how did you get in here?"
Luffy's eyes widened and with excitement, he jumped in to answer. He kept his voice flat and quoted Police Squad as he answered, "I'm a locksmith…and I'm a locksmith"
Nami and the pirate both blinked at him for a moment while Luffy alternated his gaze between the two with expectation and the pirate soon chuckled, "Heh… that was good. Do anoth-"
He got cut off when Nami just broke a bottle over his head and knocked him out.
"Nami!" Luffy whined, "The guy was appreciating my joke! You don't knock someone o-"
"Shut up!" she hissed, "He was so loud… And as for the joke, it was horrible!"
"That was comedy gold and you know it! I saw the smile on your face!"
"I didn't smile!"
"You did!"
"Oh shut up!" Nami hissed with a small blush of embarrassment as she had in fact found it to be funny and her lips had twitched upwards. The way he had delivered that line was in fact quite good but she refused to acknowledge that she had almost laughed at something so stupid. She got to bagging up all the treasure when she saw him sulking in a corner mumbling, "I waited my whole life for someone to ask me those questions in this scenario" and she shook her head as she continued to loot the place. 'What is he? A child?'
She kept glancing at him as she filled up the bags to see if he was interested in the treasure, but he didn't even glance at it, and seeing his carefree attitude, she let her guard down just a bit.
"…Why a brontosaurus?" she asked without looking up as she stuffed all the gold and money inside a bag.
"What?"
"Back when we were in the dinghy…you said 'Hey look, a Brontosaurus' to distract all of them. Why that specific dinosaur?"
Luffy grinned as he got close to her, "It's already funny if they fall for the oldest trick in the book of 'Hey, look! It's a blank.' Now, you add something absurd at the end like an alien spaceship or a brontosaurus, and they still fall for it?" he chuckled, "It's waay funnier"
Nami sucked in her lips to keep them from twitching upwards.
"I know it's not something worthy of a laugh, but you can chuckle at least. No one's gonna judge," Luffy said amused at her reaction.
"I'm not gonna. Because it's so stupid"
"Doesn't mean you didn't find it funny. And you did smile"
"If you want to make a girl laugh so bad, then you gotta try harder" she smirked challengingly.
"Okay then," Luffy also smirked and suddenly poked her in the stomach.
"Hey! That's cheating!" she said surprised and amused. She wanted to be mad at him for invading her personal space like that, but he just seemed so childish with no ulterior motive behind his actions that she could only find him to be playful.
"You never said I couldn't get physical," he said poking her in the stomach again and she squirmed trying to hold her laughter in. "Hey!"
"Don't hold back. Laugh at stupid things if you want to," he chuckled and kept poking her in the stomach.
"Okay okay! Stop!" Nami laughed feeling ticklish and also amused at how he behaved. When he did stop, she stared at him in amusement, "What are you, a child?"
"Shishishishi"
Nami's lips curled upwards hearing his joyful laughter. "You live in Inizio?" she continued the conversation.
"Nope"
"Visiting here?"
Luffy knew how she would react, but he had to say it sooner or later, so ripped the bandaid off. "Nope, I'm a pirate"
Nami's entire demeanour changed as she took a step away from him and her face morphed into angry disgust, "You're a scumbag pirate?!"
"No, I'm just a pirate. I'm not a scumbag"
"All pirates are scumbags. All you do is ruin people's lives!"
"I hate those pirates who go around hurting innocent people too. They just give pirates a bad name. I'm in it for the adventure!"
"Please! All pirates are scumbags who go around destroying everything they see! I hate pirates!" she yelled raising her voice a bit too loud. 'God! I can't believe I let my guard down around this guy!'
"Hey, I heard her!" / "There!" / "She's in one of these rooms!" / " Search for that thief!"
Nami paled when she realized where exactly she was. She had been so lost in talking with Luffy that she had actually forgotten she was on a pirate ship stealing their treasure and she couldn't believe that she had just screamed and given her position away. She looked at Luffy, who gave her an amused smile while saying "Idiot~"
"You're the idiot!" she snapped back, again raising her voice that only alerted the others again and made Luffy chuckle.
"It's all your fault! Stop laughing! Shut up!" Nami hissed grabbing him by the throat and shaking him getting infuriated at how carefree he was being. It was he who had made her let her guard down and talking with him had made her feel completely relaxed. And now, she was worrying about how to survive while he was still making fun of her, looking like he had absolutely no worry in the world and that pissed her off. "Ugh, I don't have time for this. They'll enter any moment and kill me!"
"Why don't you fight them?"
"You don't expect me to fight, do you?! I'm a delicate girl!"
"Nah, I saw you take out a pirate earlier. You knocked him out quite skillfully. You're good with a staff"
"Well, I had my weapon then…and who's fault is it that I don't have one now?" she huffed irritably while walking around the room to look for a good place to hide.
Luffy thought that this was the perfect opportunity to give her her present, so reached into his sling bag and pulled out the shock staff. "Here, you can use this. Consider it a replacement for breaking your staff"
"A baton?" Nami said as she took it. It looked shiny, hi-tech and expensive, so she got curious and started to inspect it. "I'm not used to a baton though. Its reach isn't long eith-"
"Press the button at the bottom"
"Hm?" Nami inspected it closer and found a button and also a dial with 0 to 100 marked on it at the bottom. She first pressed the button and it extended to be as long as herself. "Wow! A retractable bo staff?! This is great!"
She kept pressing the button to contract and extend it, already thinking of ways she could use it to surprise attack someone.
"You ain't seen nothing yet," Luffy grinned as he took the cap off of the staff revealing two iron rods.
"Iron rods?"
"Just poke someone with it"
"Oh? It's like a spear?" she wondered but then noticed that the two iron rods weren't that pointy and became confused. "It's not that pointy or long though… what's the use of poking someone? And what's this dial?"
The door to the room they were in suddenly opened and only then did Nami remember that pirates were out to kill her. She glared at Luffy as his carefree attitude had again made her relaxed and made her forget the situation she was in, but the bastard still had a smile on his face even when more pirates started showing up, and that only infuriated her more.
"She's here!" / "Thief! You'll pay for stealing from us!"
"Oh hey," she smiled at them, putting Luffy at the back of her mind, while thinking of a way to escape, "We can talk this out you know. I've stolen a lo-"
"Nami," Luffy cut in totally unbothered by the pirates entering the room, "Just poke someone while turning the dial up"
"Shut up!" Nami hissed. 'This guy is gonna get me killed!'
It had started off with two pirates but more were coming in as every second passed and soon, more than ten pirates had entered the small room and even more were just outside the doorway.
"A demonstration then," Luffy grinned and suddenly moved behind Nami and took hold of both her hands. One moved her right hand so that the staff would touch the closest pirate, while the other went over her left hand, where his thumb moved over her thumb which was on the dial and he pushed it up.
"Wha?!" Nami was surprised by his sudden action but her body and thoughts froze when she saw the iron rods sparking.
BZZZT!
Her breathing got hitched and she watched in fascinated horror as the man got electrocuted, his whole body convulsing violently as if he was having a seizure. She took a step back unconsciously and leaned onto Luffy's chest as the man continued to get electrocuted for three long seconds before Luffy pushed the dial back down through her thumb. The man fell forwards right at Nami's feet, his mouth open and drooling, his eyes unfocused, and his body jerking slightly from time to time as slight shocks still ran through his body.
"…"
"…"
"Wh…what is this?" Nami said finally breathing again, not even having realized that she had stopped.
"Never seen a taser before?"
"THAT'S NOT A FUCKING TASER!" Nami, along with many pirates too, cried in unison.
"Shishishi it's just an advanced version of a taser," Luffy laughed before looking at Nami, "So? How's this as a replacement for the bo staff I broke earlier? I think it's worth 5 million"
"You can't be serious," Nami said, not believing someone would give her such a strong weapon as a replacement for basically a stick. "You're really giving this to me?"
"Sure am!" Luffy happily said pushing her back onto her feet.
"How dare you?!" a pirate suddenly swung a sword at Nami, hoping to take her by surprise, but Luffy, who was still holding onto her arms, just turned her wrist making the staff rotate and the iron rods touched the man's chin. He, realizing what was about to happen, immediately dropped his sword and started begging, "Please! Please, don-"
Luffy let go of her thumb and smirked, "If you'd like to do it this time"
Nami looked at her hand holding the staff, then at the pirate begging, then at Luffy's face before looking back at the begging pirate, and didn't hesitate a second more as she pushed the dial up. "I sure would"
Nami smiled as the man started convulsing but she lost the smile when she saw that his reaction was much more violent than the earlier man.
"Ah, don't go so high up," Luffy quickly said as he pushed her thumb down lowering the intensity. "The 0 to 100 is the intensity level. Around 50 will kill a normal man, so don't go above that. If you push it too high, that'll happen," he said pointing at the unconscious man who had just dropped to the floor, his skin badly burnt at the point where the iron rods had touched his skin.
Nami gulped, "T-This is too absurd. What kind of weapon is this?"
"Ugh questions questions," Luffy grumbled as he turned her to face the remaining pirates who were frozen in shock, "You can ask all that later. For now, let's take care of the rest of these guys"
Nami saw all the pirates taking a step back and for the first time in her life, she experienced how it felt to instill fear in her enemies… and it was an ecstatic feeling. Her face split into a wide smile as she sparked the shock staff a couple of times making bzzt! bzzt! sounds, which made the pirates gulp in fear and take another step back.
"I like how you think, Luffy. Okay, until we get out of this situation, it's a temporary truce between us" she said as she took a step forward.
"AHHHHHH!" the pirates scrambled trying to run out the door, but Nami chased them feeling powerful. She had won in mind games and trickery sure, but downright scaring her enemies? This was a first. And she loved it. She chased the pirates who tried to run away, electrocuting one after the other.
Luffy hung back watching her fight and was impressed with the way she handled the staff. Even if it was a strong weapon, it meant nothing if she couldn't touch a person with the iron rods. Maybe the first one or two might get caught by surprise, but the others would wizen up and just avoid the iron rods or deflect it away like a sword. If they calmed down and thought about it, the shock staff was weaker than a sword as the only deadly part of it was the tip, unlike a sword which had a whole edge to it.
The pirates soon did realize that the top was the only dangerous part of the staff and circled her, trying to gang up on her, but Nami seemed to have already realized its weakness too and was fast and nimble as she weaved through the pirates. She kept contracting and extending the staff as and when required taking out many by surprise and was twirling it around with minimal movements so that it could reach the pirates. If someone deflected it, she just redirected her staff to the next person before twirling the staff around herself and getting the original target. She was graceful, fast, and dynamic as she was quickly learning how to fight with the shock staff.
She did get in over her head and soon made her first mistake as she let herself wide open for a sword swing, but Luffy quickly took him out already expecting something like that would happen. Nami caught his eyes and he just gave her a grin as if saying, "I got your back. Go crazy!" while he casually punched a guy's face in and she nodded back with a matching grin of her own understanding that he was strong and had her back.
She made many more mistakes, which Luffy took care of, but she improved quickly and made lesser and lesser mistakes as the fight progressed. She had come out of the room by the end and was taking out the ones in the corridor and just five minutes since the first pirate got electrocuted, all of them were either down or had run away.
Nami panted with an ecstatic smile on her face, more tired at the heightened feelings of excitement rather than tiredness, as she stood above the unconscious bodies of enemy pirates. 'I did this?' she thought in disbelief. She had a hard time in just one-on-one physical fights before and usually relied on surprise attacks to win, but right now, she had taken out more than 20 pirates in less than 5 minutes. She couldn't even have dreamed of something like this in her wildest imagination.
She also acknowledged that she had made a lot of mistakes and taken unnecessary risks while fighting which would have gotten her killed, but somehow seeing Luffy with a casual smile looking out for her back and taking out any pirate who attacked her blindspot like it was nothing, she had trusted him and she was too lost in the feelings of ecstasy as she took out enemies that she had even forgotten that Luffy was a pirate.
Luffy's smile hadn't faded ever since he had spotted her and it only widened more now as he saw her happy face. The moment he had seen the shock staff on Reiju's ship, he wanted Nami to have it and had specifically gotten it from Reiju for her sake. And watching her ecstatic smile now, he was glad he did. Until Usopp made her climatact, she could use that as her weapon, and Usopp could even make a better climatact if he studied how the staff worked and maybe even incorporate some elements into his own weapons, thereby increasing the battle prowess of two of the weaker members of the crew. He had lots of ideas of how he could make his crew stronger in their own fighting styles, and this was just one of them.
"This. Is. So. Amazing!" Nami actually started excitedly jumping in place when her joy became too much to hold in. She suddenly turned to Luffy and got right up in his face while grabbing his shoulders, "How the hell does something like this exist?! Did you make this?! How does it work?! Are you actually giving this to me?! No wait, I don't care what you say, this is mine! I'm not parting with it no matter wh-"
"Okay okay slow down," Luffy chuckled as he cut her off, "Too many questions"
She didn't stop though and continued with excitement, "Hey, let's team up! You and me! I saw you looking out for my back, so I know you're quite strong yourself. I'll be going to the Grand Line soon, so I could use a tough guy like you. We make a good team, so we can steal all we want from the bigger pirates there and make a fortune together! What do you say?!"
"Since you're going to the Grand Line, you know how to navigate?"
Nami puffed her chest out proudly, "I'm the best navigator you'll ever find! I love the seas!"
"Great! Then join my crew!"
Nami suddenly lost her enthusiasm and groaned burying her face in her hands, "How did I forget that? You're a pirate… Forget I said an-"
They were interrupted when a boom sounded and suddenly Nami's world went chaotic as splinters of wood exploded in her face. She realized that someone had just shot a cannon from the outside and that she was right in the middle of the blast zone, about to die. At least, that's what she thought as she saw broken wood coming at her, but the next moment, she found herself in Luffy's embrace as he shielded her from all the debris and the next instant, she saw that they were out on the upper deck with the sky above their head.
Luffy let her go and she looked around at the sky for a second before looking back at Luffy, "Ho-how do you keep doing that?"
"Do what?"
"Quit playing dumb!" she snapped, "You know exactly what I'm asking about! The crazy thing where you somehow appear in another place instantly!"
"Shishishi that can wait. There are pirates firing cannons at us"
It was only then that she saw the other pirate ship aiming all its cannons at them. Many of the pirates pointed at her yelling "Ahh! It's that witch! She'll shock you!"
After seeing Nami electrocute a bunch of people, looked like the remaining pirates who ran away went to the other ship and were now firing cannons at them, scared out of their minds. A part of her was happy that she had instilled that much fear in those pirates, but another part was thinking of how to escape.
"Can you do the thing again?" Nami asked looking at Luffy, who just watched as they aimed the cannons right at them and fired without warning. Nami slouched down but kept an eye on Luffy thinking he would again grab her and do his thing where he instantly appears somewhere else, but her eyes widened in shock when he didn't move and waited for the cannonball to come to him. 'Did he freeze in fear?!'
Nami watched in horror as the cannonball was about to hit him, but he just jumped and grabbed the cannonball with his bare hands. He then turned, the projectile turning with him and basically reversed the cannonball's trajectory a full 360 degrees, throwing it back towards the pirate ship before landing back on deck. She gawked not believing what she had just seen and turned her gaze towards the pirate ship where all the pirates had their jaws on the ground. It was only for a second though as the cannonball Luffy had thrown back made impact right in their cannon deck, which was followed by a chain reaction of an explosion, which blew up the ship.
"They really need to learn to keep fire sources away from gunpowder huh?"
Not hearing any answer, he turned to her and found she was staring at him in disbelief with her mouth open. "Hm? What's wrong?"
The nonchalant way he was acting after doing what he did with the cannonball just pissed her off. "The hell do you mean what's wrong?! You just redirected a cannonball with your bare hands! That's crazy! How did you do that?!"
Taken aback at her outrage he didn't know what to say to her. "Um well, you just hold your hand up like this… and then when you catch the cannonball, you grip it tight and just twist your wrist like this…and then its momentum will push you back, so you keep your elbows lose and one leg tight so that it'll make you turn and do a 360 degree turn like this… and then you just let it go…I guess?"
"…THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEANT AND YOU KNOW IT!" Nami lost it and smacked him on the head. The first of many smacks throughout their lives.
"Hey! What was that for? I just told you what I did"
"Normal people can't do that! Come to think of it, you're too fast too! What are you?!"
"…Human?"
"Ugh, you're so infuriating to talk to…"
"And you're so funny! Are you always so high-strung and snappy?"
"It's your damn fault!" she snapped again making Luffy laugh, which only infuriated her further and she started smacking him, which only made him laugh harder.
Nami huffed not able to understand why he was so happy even when he was getting hit by her. When she had reflexively hit him just a few seconds ago, she had thought that that was it and she would die for offending him, but the smile on his face never faded. He had a disarming quality about him which had made her relaxed around him and that's also the reason she kept forgetting he was a damn pirate. Or rather, she didn't want to believe that he was a pirate. He didn't seem bad at all with absolutely no malice in him, and she didn't want to believe that he was doing a deceiving act the whole time.
She sighed getting confused at her own thoughts and when her eyes landed on the bag of treasure she had filled in the treasury room out on deck, she realized that Luffy had again brought the treasure with him and looked at him suspiciously.
"Hey, you're not getting any treasure! I stole it fair and square"
"Sure, I don't care. You can have it"
"…Then why are you here? Aren't you here to steal from an enemy pirate? And why did you blow up the ship?"
"It was a mistake. They were firing at the village, so I just threw a cannonball back at them and boom! the ship exploded. Just like what happened now"
"…So what if they were firing at a village? Why would a scumbag pirate like you care?"
"I'm not a scumbag pirate, I'm a pirate"
"All pirates are scumbags!"
"Yeah yeah whatever," Luffy shrugged the topic off knowing she wouldn't budge so soon. He looked towards the island and saw that Makino was standing at the shore waiting for him. He also saw Marine ships in the far distance coming towards them, so decided it was time to leave.
"Hey Nami, I'm heading to the Grand Line soon and looking for a navigator too. Join my crew!"
"I already told you! No way in hell am I becoming a pirate!"
"Nope, you're joining"
"No, I'm not! I'm a pirate thief! I steal from pirates! I'll never become a damn pirate!"
"C'mon, you yourself said you wanted to team up. Both of us team up, or you join my crew, the end result is the same of us being together right? So, stick with me," Luffy said as he brought a hand up for a handshake, "What do you say?"
Nami really did want to act like she was joining his crew, get on his ship, steal all his treasure and run away. He also had the shock staff and seeing how casually he had given it to her, she thought that he might have more weapons like it, and if he did, she wanted to get her hands on them. But she was hesitating seeing how strong he was. If she offended him by mistake, her life would be over… but then again, she could also use his strength. Grand Line was a big risk as she didn't know what to expect and if she had someone strong like him, she could be safer.
She pondered over his offer a bit more but sticking with him only had upsides, with the only downside being that he was strong and could potentially hurt her. She knew she couldn't always play it safe and had to take risks sometimes, and this situation was definitely where she would gain a lot if she took a risk. Besides, Luffy himself didn't seem like a bad person at all, and she kept forgetting he was a pirate judging by his behaviour.
"I also have to pay you back for almost killing you…" Luffy said when she kept thinking and didn't answer.
"Hah!" Nami scoffed, "I'm not delusional enough to think you'll have a billion berries, let alone give it to someone else"
"Challenge accepted!" Luffy grinned, "I don't have it but I can one day get that much"
"Sure you can," Nami rolled her eyes obviously not believing him. "Well anyway, I think it'll be beneficial for me if I stick with you, so let's just say that I'm temporarily joining you," Nami said slapping his palm, "But I get 70% of what all we steal"
"Nami," Luffy almost vibrated with excitement, "Other than enough for food supplies, you can have the rest of the treasure"
"…what?"
"Yeah, you can have it all"
'Does this guy have a huge crew that takes a lot of money to feed?' she thought suspiciously. "How many members you got?"
"Just you"
"…Huh?"
"Makino is with us for a while, but she's just accompanying me for a month. So, three of us for now"
"……what?" Nami was utterly confused.
Luffy saw the Marine ships coming closer and pulled her along, "Marine ships incoming. Let's go before they get here"
"Uh right," Nami said snapping out of her confusion. They quickly got in a dinghy and rowed towards the island where Makino was waiting at the docks, along with a few townspeople and the kids Luffy had befriended the previous day.
"Big bro Luffy!" the kids all jumped at him hugging him while he chuckled patting their heads while Nami watched in bewilderment.
"Took you long enough," Makino said as she curiously studied the orange-haired girl. "And who's this cute girl you've got here?"
"Makino, meet Nami! My navigator!"
"I'm just temporarily teaming up with you!"
"Shishishishi"
Makino just giggled seeing the happy smile on Luffy's face and studied Nami with interest. 'So she's the one he was looking for'
"Ah, is everything okay in the village? We need to leave now" Luffy said as he let the kids go from his hands.
"You're going already?!" the kids whined and Luffy just ruffled their hair and placated them, telling them he had to leave because he was on an adventure.
Ten minutes later, Luffy, Makino and Nami were sailing away on a sailboat as they waved goodbye to the townspeople. The sailboat even had a cabin on it and it was the boat Luffy and Makino had bought on the first island they had stopped at and were using ever since.
"Thank you, Big bro Luffy! Big sis Makino! Bye!" the kids and even some townspeople yelled as they sailed away and the two waved back while Nami watched on with confusion.
"Take care!"
—
"So, let me get this straight" Nami sighed looking at Luffy and Makino sitting across from her, "You set out on your journey to become the Pirate King around two weeks ago and and I'm your first crewmate?"
"…you're really slow on the uptake huh?" Luffy said shaking his head.
"Shut it! I understand it but it's just so absurd, that's all"
"Why though? Everyone starts at one point or another. My journey just happened to start very recently"
"…" Nami had no rebuke for that and just sighed. 'There goes my plan to steal from him… oh well, at least I don't have to worry about many pirates…' "Okay fine, forget that… what was with the townspeople back at the island. They were all thanking you?"
"Uh-huh"
"Why?"
"I told you, I protected them and took out those pirates"
"You call yourself a pirate and yet, you protect a town from other pirates? That's not normal!"
Luffy just shrugged not saying anything and Nami huffed with irritation. She just couldn't understand what his goals were as he didn't seem to have looted anything from the island and she didn't know why a pirate would do what he did. She turned to the other occupant of the boat and found the green-haired woman resting her head on her hand that was propped up on her knees, watching them with a happy smile.
"Um hi?"
"Oh hello," Makino spoke with her for the first time, just enjoying the two's banter until then. "Nice to meet you, I'm Makino"
"Yes, hello. I'm Nami. So what are you supposed to be?"
"Oh don't mind me. I'm just here to spend some time with Luffy, that's all"
"…I see?"
"Anyway Nami," Luffy changed the topic, "Let's set sail to Alvida pirates!"
"Huh? You're going to her too?"
'Ah crap, my first mistake…at least I lasted so long without a slip-up' he patted himself on the back and told her the story he had come up with in advance.
"Yep"
"Why?"
"I'm kinda taking out all the pirates in this region"
"…"
"…"
"…Why?"
"Reputation. My bounty will be higher if I take out many pirates"
"And why the hell would you want a bounty?!"
"What kind of pirate doesn't have a bounty, Nami? Are you stupid?"
"Don't call me stupid! You're the stupid one!"
"Shishishishi"
Makino was also giggling and that only made Nami huff in anger, but she calmed herself down. This was good for her as she didn't have to convince him to steal from pirates at least. She suddenly perked up with an idea, "Ah if you want to take pirates out, then there's a close one here. We can go to them before Alvida"
"You mean the Bulldog pirates?" Luffy asked in amusement.
"…Yeah. How did you know?"
"We just came from an island they attacked," Makino informed, "Those pirates started attacking the village while we were there, so Luffy took them out"
"You took them out?! I was going to steal from them!"
"But they started attacking the village… so I had no choice"
Nami groaned not able to argue with him. She actually wasn't going to target the Bulldog pirates as they didn't have much and she didn't want to spend time on them, but now that she had the shock staff and also Luffy, she thought she could take them out and steal from them in less than an hour.
She surprised herself with her own thought process. Just an hour ago, she was all about how to trick or steal without ever getting caught by making meticulous plans, but now, she was casually saying that she wanted to take out an entire pirate crew and then take everything they had.
"And their treasure?" she asked wondering if he had taken it.
"Umm, I don't know? I didn't bother… maybe the villagers got it"
Her eyes twitched as she also had to accept this new reality where pirates wanted to protect innocent people instead of looting them. But still, she didn't think he was being truthful and thought he had some ulterior motives she didn't know about yet. She sighed letting that go and focused on her next target - The Alvida Pirates.
"Okay, first Alvida pirates and then I know where we can get a map to the Grand Line"
"Okay great"
Nami leaned back and thought about their previous conversation. "So, let's continue where we left off. What did you mean when you said I could have all the treasure we steal apart from enough for food supplies?"
"Exactly what it means…" Luffy trailed off, "Does that sentence have some other meaning I don't get?"
Before Nami could blow up at him, Makino interjected, "Stop teasing her so much, Luffy. You know exactly why she's having a hard time believing your words"
"That's right!" Nami agreed, "You're the one saying strange things!"
"Okay okay…well, I did mean that literally. Not sure what else to tell ya"
"You'll have to get used to his strangeness," Makino said with a smile. "Our idea of a pirate is very different from what you might know"
Nami hummed, not wanting to argue with someone who seemed as sweet as Makino, but she didn't trust her either. 'There's some ulterior motive here I don't know about…or he's just infatuated with me' she thought recalling how happy he seemed to be around her. Either way, she was going to stick with him for a while as it really did seem beneficial to her.
—
'The two sure have a weird relationship' was the conclusion Nami came to as she saw Luffy and Makino interacting over the whole day. They seemed like close friends, but also like siblings, but also like a mother and son. She had made small talk with them and found that Makino was a barmaid and her only response to why she was accompanying a pirate was 'I just wanted to spend some time with Luffy'
Either way, she didn't care much and was much more interested in the shock staff and had spent the majority of the day getting used to it. It was such a powerful weapon that she even had the thought of beating Arlong with it, but images of battleships getting destroyed flashed in her mind and she knew it would be impossible. Even if she got him by surprise, all he needed was a second before he would just jump back and break contact. She shook those thoughts away and was just happy that she could at least defeat normal pirates with it by her side.
"So this needs charge huh?" Nami asked as she twirled the shock staff in her hand.
"Yeah, it's not some magical device" Luffy answered as he cooked noodles. It was night, so they had furled the sails and it was Luffy's turn to cook that night. They had bought a portable stove, a few pans and other basic cooking utensils on Makino's insistence and Makino and Luffy had taken turns cooking for each other over the past two weeks.
"Isn't it useless then? I need to keep charging it? How long does it take?"
"Ah, charging it is a bit different. I'll show you how to charge it when we are on land. Takes like five minutes if I do it, that's all"
"Really?! That's amazing!"
"Who exactly made it?" Makino asked as she watched Luffy cooking with a bit of fascination, still not over how he could cook now.
"A friend made it. I played with it a lot, so she gave it to me"
"You played with this?" Nami asked incredulously.
"Yep!" Luffy said as he took the staff from her and pointed it out at sea. "I would use it like a wand and just go AVADA KEDAVRA!" he yelled as he pushed the dial all the way up and the iron rods sparked just as he said the spell.
"It's Abracadabra idiot"
"That's the magic spell used for tricks. AVADA KEDAVRA! is a Killing Curse"
"huh?"
"Ehh forget it," Luffy sighed before he smiled mischievously, "Speaking of magic, do you know what you call a dog that can do magic?"
"Wait what?" Nami said confused at the random topic change.
"A labracadabra!"
Nami rolled her eyes at him. "Really? Making puns to make me laugh now?"
"It wasn't for you," Luffy chuckled as he watched Makino, who had turned her face away from them and her shoulders were shaking. He had found that Makino loved dad jokes and he didn't fail to tell her at least one per day.
"Really, Makino?" Nami sighed, "Don't laugh at something so stupid"
"Hehehehe it's so funny the way he says it though"
"Shishishi anyway here," Luffy said as the noddles were done and handed it to the two after putting it in a bowl.
"I still can't get over the fact that you can cook now," Makino shook her head, "And make something this good"
Nami tasted the food too and added her own comment, "This is good? Rather than good, I would say it's not bad. There's nothing to complain about, but there's nothing special about it either. It's just…bland I guess. Ahh, but not bland in a bad way either…"
"Exactly," Makino nodded, "I guess since you didn't know him before, it seems like that, but making something 'not bad' is an achievement in and of itself for him"
"Really bad at cooking before huh?" Nami giggled.
Makino also giggled agreeing with her, "The most he had done was roast meat over a fire and even then he couldn't wait for it to cook and eat it raw"
"Wow, so from that to 'okay' cooking? You learned to cook?" Nami asked turning to Luffy.
"Yep! As long as it tasted okay, it was enough for the others, so that's all I learned" Luffy said thinking about the kids at the orphanage from Leo's life.
"Others?" Makino asked.
"Umm… some people I met"
Thankfully, Makino just hummed and let the topic go. Nami could sense the slight tension between the two, but didn't pry nor was she interested. She simply ate the rest but suddenly noticing something on Luffy's wrists, she took a surprised gulp of air and started to choke.
"Hey, you okay?"
"Y-yeah, I'm fine" Nami coughed, her voice quivering as her mind worked overtime to think of ways to escape. 'Nonononono I'm caught in a trap! Shit shit! I shouldn't have let my guard down!'
"Luffy, your cuffs are showing" Makino informed knowing why Nami was suddenly on guard.
"Oh"
"Look, I get that you're a criminal and I don't know what your goal is, but I'm sure we can work something out," Nami said as she slowly backed away in fear. 'All this time, it was an act?! I can't believe it!'
"These are bracelets," Luffy said clicking them off and putting them back on again.
"…"
There was a beat of silence where Nami stared incredulously at his 'bracelets' before looking up into his amused eyes and all tension drained out of her body as she slumped down with a massive sigh of relief.
"Pfft~"
She lunged at him hearing him laugh at her and started to choke him, "Why the hell are you wearing bracelets that look like cuffs, you goddamn idiot?! You almost gave me a heart attack!"
"Shishishishi she really likes to snap at people huh, Makino?"
"Hehe yes, she sure does. And she looks so cute when she snaps too"
"Stop making fun of me, you damn pirates!"
"Not a pirate"
"Damn pirate and his weird mother-like friend!"
"Shishishishi" / "Hehehehehe" / "Argghhhh!"
———o———
"Wow, we came to the destination right away," Luffy marvelled at how fast they had reached Alvida's base. "You're really good Nami. I thought it would two days at least, but you did it less than a day"
"Heehee I told you, I'm the best navigator in East Blue!"
"As expected of the navigator of the future Pirate King!"
"Yep! As expe- wait! I'm just temporarily joining you!"
"Hey, did you hear that?" / "Hear what?" / "I think I just heard someone…maybe my imagination…" / "Get back to work or Alvida-sama will kill you!"
Luffy teasingly smirked at Nami who had clamped her mouth shut and her face reddened quickly in embarrassment. "Idiot~"
Nami snaked her arm around Luffy's throat and choked him while whispering, "It's your fault!"
"Shishishi"
The three had reached the uncharted island Alvida used as her base the following morning and found that Alvida's ship and Alvida herself were on the island. Makino had stayed back at the boat while Luffy and Nami had discreetly explored the island and they were currently looking at the cabin where all their treasure was stashed while hiding behind a couple of bushes.
"Okay, the treasure is in there with Alvida," Nami said after she had had enough of choking him. "And there are many pirates patrolling the area. So, you go cause a distraction that'll take her and all the others away from the cabin"
"Why? We can just fight them all"
"No! If it's possible to do it stealthily, we do it stealthily"
She did recognize the weaknesses of her weapon. She could defeat a few people quite easily but anyone a bit skillful could avoid or deflect it like a sword, and she had heard of Alvida's terrifying iron mace. One small mistake and her brain would be splattered on the floor, so if she could avoid a fight, she wanted to.
"Sure" Luffy agreed as he wanted to find Coby anyway. "I'll be back"
He ran off trying to look for Coby and it wasn't hard as he soon found him in another cabin which held a pantry with a few other pirates who were all bullying him. Coby was a bit of a pudgy kid whose body posture made him look smaller than he actually was. He had light pink hair and wore round-framed glasses that were too big for his face, and everything about him screamed 'I'm timid'
"Hey Coby! Do the work properly. You missed a spot here!" one pirate yelled as he lazily lounged on a chair.
"I'm sorry!" Coby immediately bowed down in apology before quickly sweeping the area the pirate had pointed at.
"That's a good boy," he laughed kicking Coby, "Make sure it never happens again"
"Yes, I'm sorry! It won't happen again!" Coby got up and again bowed before he continued sweeping the place. Looked like the others were just making him do all the work and Coby did as they said without any complaints.
Luffy sighed not liking the current Coby one bit. He just watched as Coby cleaned the place, getting smacked around a couple more times by the others before he was let go. Coby then pitifully walked out and made his way to the forest and Luffy followed him knowing where he was going.
Coby went through a clearing which was hidden in plain sight and Luffy saw the dinghy he was building. It was a shoddy piece of work which looked like it was made out of badly rotted wooden boards which were barely held together to form the shape of a dinghy by nails. Coby collapsed next to it leaning on it and sighed deeply as his eyes teared up. "I want this to end…I want to escape…"
"Why don't you then?" Luffy said as he dropped down from where he was sitting in the tree right above him.
"Ahhh!" Coby screamed before instantly bowing down with his head to the ground while saying, "This isn't what it looks like! I just found this dinghy in the forest and have no idea who ma-"
Luffy sat down in front of him and patted his shoulder, "Hey, relax"
Coby whimpered as he slowly lifted his head but when he saw Luffy, his fear got replaced with confusion and curiosity, "Who are you?"
"I'm Luffy, nice to meetcha!"
"Ah hello, I'm Coby. Nice to meet you" he introduced himself on reflex before saying, "No wait! Who are you?"
"Someone just passing by, don't worry about it"
"This is the hideout of the pirate Iron Mace Alvida!" Coby yelled in panic, "You need to run away or she'll kill you if she finds you!"
"Eh don't worry about that. I overheard you talking, you want to escape from here?"
"Ah that…yeah," he sighed as he calmed down and sat across from him, "I'm a chore boy on her crew because of a mistake…"
He explained his whole story of how he had mistakenly boarded her ship while going out to fish and she had kept him alive in exchange for becoming her chore boy.
"Why don't you escape now?"
"Impossible! Impossible! Just thinking about what she would do to me if she caught me makes my bladder weak!"
"But you've built this right?" Luffy said patting the dinghy, "It's horribly made but you've still built it right?"
"Yeah…" Coby trailed off with a sad smile looking down, "I built it to escape from this place but I just don't have the courage…"
"Shishi you sure are a wimp! I don't like you one bit!"
"Ugh…you don't mince words huh?" Coby cried. "So what about you? You said you're passing by?"
"Yep! I'm on my journey to become the Pirate King!"
"Pirate King?!" he gawked for a second before continuing, "That means you're a pirate?!"
"Yep!"
"What about your crew?"
"Got one more member"
He froze for a couple of seconds before he blew up, "Pirate King?! That means you'll have to obtain everything that this world has to offer! Wealth, Fame, Power, you'd have to achieve it all! You'd have to go after the Pirate King Gold Roger's treasure, the One Piece!"
"Oh good exposition, Coby" Luffy clapped.
"You can't be serious?! Every pirate in this Golden Age of Piracy is after that treasure-"
"So am I"
"-There's no way you can stand at the apex of this Great Pirate Era and become the Pirate King! No way! No way! It'll never happen! Absolutely no wa-"
BONK!
"Why did you hit me?" Coby groaned falling to the floor.
"You were becoming hysterical"
"Ah well… I'm used to it" Coby self-deprecatingly said as he sat up.
Luffy smiled watching him. Unlike others who just laughed it off, or brushed off his claim as a joke, Coby actually took his words seriously. Sure, he was really pessimistic and didn't think it was possible, but that was because of his lack of confidence more than anything.
"You know, Coby" Luffy said taking off his hat, "I promised the man that gave me this hat that I would become the Pirate King. And it's been my dream ever since… Two years ago, I was dying with no hope of survival. And at that moment, I didn't regret that I was dying but I regretted that I was dying without ever having chased my dream," he then looked back at Coby as he put the hat back on his head, "It's not a matter of whether I can or not. I've decided that I'm going to become the Pirate King, so I'll do it. Even if I die, I'll be happy that I at least died while chasing my dream"
Coby's eyes trembled as if he was just given a life-altering statement, and for him, it really was life-altering. "I've never thought of it that way…" he trailed off looking down at himself thoughtfully. "Do you think I can do it too?" he muttered softly.
"Do what?"
"I want to join the Marines…"
"The Marines huh"
"Yes!" Coby stood up with determination, "It's been my dream ever since I was little! To join the Marines and catch bad guys! Do you think I can do it too?!"
"Why don't you try and see?"
"Yes! I'll do it! Rather than being her chore boy for the rest of my life, I'll break out of here, join the Marines and even catch Alvida!"
"Shishi that's the spirit!" Luffy grinned patting his shoulder, "Alright then, let's go and tell Alvida that you're leaving her crew!"
"Yes! Let's go!" Coby said with determination as he ran behind Luffy going with the flow, but after a few steps realized just what he was doing and screamed, "Wait what?! I have to tell her that I'm leaving her crew?!"
"Yep! You have to face your fears you know"
"No way! No wa-"
"Come along," Luffy grinned as he dragged a crying Coby behind him. It wasn't long before they were at Alvida's cabin but something seemed to be happening as all the pirates were running around in a panic and soon, Alvida herself appeared with her big iron mace while yelling, "There are intruders on the island! Looks like someone is after my head!"
"Hmm seems like something has happened," Luffy said observing the situation and quickly found Nami who was hiding behind a tree.
"Your other crewmate?" Coby asked as the two discreetly made their way towards Nami.
"Yeah" Luffy grabbed Coby and Soru'd his way to her shocking Coby and also Nami as he suddenly appeared in front of her.
"Kyaa!" Nami screamed reflexively before seeing who it was and clamping her own mouth shut causing Luffy to obviously tease her. "You need to stop yelling and giving away your position when you're hiding, Nami"
Nami glared at him about to scream and beat him up but Luffy suddenly grabbed her and jumped back while also dragging Coby along the way. Nami knew by then that Luffy only did that when she was in danger and sure enough, the tree she was hiding behind broke in two as an iron mace smashed it to pieces.
"Who are you all?!" Alvida yelled eyeing the two strangers before her eyes fell on Coby, "Coby?! You're working with them, you ungrateful brat?!"
Coby's entire body shuddered in fear and he cowered muttering, "N-No, Alv-"
"Wow, you really are huge. Bigger than even Dadan," Luffy interrupted causing Alvida and the rest to drop their jaws in shock.
"You idiot" Nami facepalmed with a sigh.
"Luffy!" Coby grabbed him in a panic, "Take that back! Or she'll kill you!"
"You damn runt!" Alvida again brought her club down on them, which Luffy again dodged while grabbing the two.
Seeing him dodge, Alvida grew curious about him, "You're not Pirate hunter Zoro as he was caught, so who are you?"
"Wait what?! Zoro was caught?!" 'Damn, did I miscalculate the days?'
"Yes, so who are you then? Bounty hunters?"
"We're pirates" Luffy answered but his heart wasn't in it. He wanted to quickly finish this and go to Zoro, but he groaned internally when he saw Coby whimpering. 'Okay okay, slow down… Zoro will be okay. One thing at a time…'
"You're pirates huh? That means we are enemies"
"I guess"
She then turned to her chore boy, "Coby! What are you doing with them, you little pipsqueak?! I'll give you one chance to redeem yourself and come back to me. Tell me - who's the most beautiful of all on these seas?"
"Wow, she has a real complex about that huh?" Nami whispered to Luffy.
"Yeah, you're obviously the most beautiful in this part of the sea," Luffy answered nonchalantly while he observed the trembling Coby.
"…huh?" Nami turned to face Luffy in bewilderment. "Did you just try to flirt with me"
"Flirt? I just stated a fact…hmm although maybe she's hotter?" he said remembering Nojiko. He would have to see her in real life to make an accurate judgment though.
"Hey!" Nami smacked him getting annoyed. The two's whisper conversation was interrupted when Alvida yelled again for Coby to answer while Coby just whimpered not saying anything.
"Y-y-y-" Coby began but then caught Luffy staring at him in expectation. He remembered all his earlier words, his own declaration of joining the Marines, and with newfound courage bursting in him, he turned to Alvida and yelled, "It's definitely not you, you old ugly hag!"
Luffy's smile widened finally seeing him stand up for himself while Alvida and the other Alvida pirates dropped their jaws at seeing the wimpy Coby mouthing off Alvida.
"Hey! Don't be so rude!" Nami said in a chiding tone to Coby.
"Uhh, she's a pirate who's enslaved him, Nami" Luffy whispered into her ear.
"Oh…" Nami blinked alternating her gaze between Coby and Alvida, "In that case…say it again, pink-haired kid!"
"You ugly old hag!" Coby yelled again getting more encouragement. "I-I'm going to join the Marines! I-I'm going to do what I want! Yes, I'll j-join the Marines and then I'm going to catch your lousy ass!"
Alvida's veins bulged seeing not only the wimpy Coby but also a slim pretty girl making fun of her. "COBY! AND YOU UGLY LITTLE GIRL! DIE!" she yelled enraged as she brought her mace down on Coby first, who whimpered seeing his death approaching him. 'I said it! I said it! I'm not gonna have regrets! I died while fighting for my dream!'
"Shishishi well said, Coby" Luffy stood in front of him with a grin, "Leave the rest to me!"
Alvida's mace came down on his forearm and he didn't need any sort of technique to block.
"What?!" Alvida yelped, her anger getting replaced with pure shock, and Luffy swatted the mace away making her stagger backwards. Luffy didn't waste any more time nor give her a chance to talk anymore as he was impatient to leave and punched her in the gut, making her go crashing into a tree where she promptly fell unconscious.
"L-Luffy," Coby stammered in reverence, "H-How did you do that?"
"Shishi you can do it too Coby. Just train hard," he said and then turned to the other Alvida pirates who had their jaws on the ground, "Anyone has anything to say?"
They shook their heads vigorously not wanting him to beat them up, and that was the end of the Alvida pirates.
"Hey!" Nami got their attention though, "Bring all your treasure and drop it here…otherwise," she waved her shock staff around, "You know what'll happen right?"
They vigorously nodded and ran away intent on getting all the treasure they had.
"Wow, what did you do?" Luffy asked as he hadn't seen her take her staff out at all.
"It's your fault! I-"
"Is that like your catchphrase, Nami? We can play a game where I take a shot every time you say 'It's your fault'"
"It's your damn fault!" Nami snapped again getting even more enraged, "What took you so long huh?! I was waiting and waiting for you to cause a distraction but you didn't do anything!"
"Oh…sorry, got caught up talking to Coby"
"Ah, sorry" Coby also apologized thinking that Nami was scary.
"I had to do break in myself to steal the treasure but unfortunately, I got discovered," she said with a huff and then lifted the staff, "I was electrocuting them but then this started beeping before it stopped working"
"Ah it ran out of juice"
"Yeah," she sighed but seeing the Alvida pirates that were now coming up to them and dropping all their treasure at her feet, her mood lifted. "Oh well, it worked out well in the end"
Luffy stared at her with a critical eye for a few seconds as she started bagging all the treasure before saying, "Did you think I ran away and betrayed you?"
Nami gave him a sideways glance before going back to packing up the treasure not answering his question. That was confirmation enough for him that she did indeed think the same and thus, had jumped into the fight herself. He sighed knowing it would take the downfall of Arlong to make her trust him completely, but he didn't want her to suffer anymore. Her stealing the Merry, pretending to stab Usopp, getting tricked by Nezumi, her agonizing and stabbing herself in the shoulder…he wanted none of that to happen to her. And if things stayed the same, she would run away exactly like what happened in the story…
He crouched down next to her and she turned to face him. "I might be late because I'm goofing off somewhere or stuck in some situation, but I'll always be there when you need me, okay? All you have to do is ask"
Nami didn't give any indication that she had heard him but she couldn't help but ask, "…Why?"
"Because you're nakama"
"Hah!" Nami just scoffed shaking her head and dismissing his words.
'Well, I have lots of time to break down her walls… let's take it slow…' Luffy sighed internally as he got up. "Well anyway, let me show you how to charge your staff"
"Ooh yeah!" Nami also stood up excitedly and handed him the staff. Luffy twisted off the bottom of the staff revealing a metallic disc-like plate.
"This is kinda like the battery I guess…" he explained, "You charge the staff just by striking it"
"Striking it?"
"Yeah, like this," he said and started just hitting the staff on the ground.
"That's it? You're joking right?"
"No really. She tried to explain how it works to me, but it went right over my head," he said remembering Reiju trying to explain the mechanism to him. It seemed like an impact dial, except instead of releasing all the force, it converted it to electrical energy.
"Well okay. How long do I have to do this" Nami asked.
"With your strength, like a few hours to completely charge it I guess"
"Few hours?!"
"Yeah. The usual way is to punch it hard," he said as he buried the staff inside the ground such that the metallic plate was facing upwards and punched it hard a few times. A minute of punching which caused cracks to form in the ground, terrified the Alvida pirates further, impressed Coby even more and gave confirmation to Nami that he was a lot stronger than he let on, he picked it up and handed it back to Nami, "And that's it"
"Umm…if you don't mind me asking," Coby hesitantly piped up, "What exactly is that?"
"I'll show you," Nami grinned and turned to the Alvida pirates who screamed and started running away. 'Oh, I could get used to this feeling' Nami felt ecstatic as she chased one of them and electrocuted him.
Coby watched in horror and apprehension as he concluded that Nami was really scary. Way more scarier than Alvida. He looked towards Luffy to see his reaction and just saw a proud look on his face that made him realize that both were crazy.
—
"Who is he?" Makino asked pointing at Coby as they travelled away from Alvida's hideout after Nami had made sure she got all their treasure.
"Oh this is Coby"
"Hello," Coby greeted and then told his story of how he ended up as a chore boy for the Alvida pirates.
"Oh that was unfortunate"
"Wait a minute. What's the deal with this?" Nami asked confused, "He wants to be a Marine and you're a pirate who wants to help him become a Marine? Aren't you supposed to be enemies?"
"It's his dream to become a Marine so I'm helping him. That's it. We'll still be friends though"
"Luffy," Coby teared up hearing Luffy's words, "Yes, we'll still be friends even when I become a Marine!"
"Shishishishi"
Nami just sighed not understanding the enigma that was Luffy. He was one of the strangest pirate- no, person she had ever met.
"Anyway," she continued, "We're going to Shellstown now. Should be there by noon"
"Shellstown has a Marine base!" Coby piped up excitedly, "I can join the Marines there!"
"Yeah I guess"
"Hey Coby, Alvida was saying something about Zoro being captured. When was this?"
"Oh, we got that news this morning itself. That Pirate Hunter Zoro got captured two days ago in Shellstown"
Luffy let out a sigh of relief, "Okay good"
"Good?" Makino asked confused, "Why is that good?"
"He'll be there when we get there then, and I can finally meet him"
"Oh right"
"Meet him?" Nami asked.
"Yep! I'm gonna ask him to join my crew"
"…WHAT?!" Coby and Nami yelled in unison.
"Are you crazy?! He's going to kill you!"
"He's a pirate hunter, idiot. There's no way he'll become a pirate"
Luffy just smiled waving all their worries away. "Don't worry, I'll convince him"
Nami stared at his carefree face and got a headache just thinking about him. "You know," she began getting his attention, "I can't believe I'm saying this to someone but… I'm having serious doubts if you even are a pirate. You protect people, you save lives, I haven't seen you loot even one person, you even help a person become a Marine…"
"Hey! Being a pirate is about freedom. Freedom to do whatever you want. I want to do these things, so I'll do it. I don't care what other pirates do"
"So what? You ask a pirate thief to join. Now you're planning to make a pirate hunter join you… What's next? You're gonna ask Coby to join too?"
"Nah, Coby's dream lies with the Marines. He, unfortunately, can't join my crew. If his dream was something else, I would have definitely asked him"
"Luffy…" Coby teared up.
"What about me?" Nami asked, "I'm a pirate thief, so I can't become a pirate either"
"Is your dream to become a Pirate thief?"
"…Uhh no…"
"What is it then?"
"…I want to collect 100 million berries"
"One hundred million?!" Coby gaped at her, "There's no way someone can gather that much! That's impossible!"
"Shut it!" Nami smacked him, "Don't tell me it's impossible! I'm very close"
Meanwhile, Makino gave a sly smile to Luffy as they both knew there were two bags inside the cabin of the boat that held 200 million berries which Luffy had stolen in under a day back on Dawn.
"That's not a dream though" Luffy interrupted Nami's chiding of Coby.
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"Just earning money is not a dream. Money is just a means," Makino said, "You need the money for something right?"
Nami averted her eyes before blowing up at them, "Ah shut up! I don't have to tell you anything!"
Luffy and Makino sighed while Coby just nursed his bruise, now knowing that Nami was definitely way scarier than Alvida.
———o———
"We again got here at the exact time you predicted," Luffy said as he jumped out of the boat and landed on the docks of Shellstown.
"Are you gonna keep praising me every time?" Nami asked.
"You do puff your chest out in pride whenever anyone praises your navigational skills. So yes, I will"
"Shut up, idiot" Nami smacked him while controlling her blush as she indeed felt happy whenever someone praised her navigational skills… well, with one exception.
"Anyway," Luffy bubbled with excitement knowing he would be meeting Zoro soon, "Let's first go see Zoro!"
He didn't wait as he started leading the way towards the big Marine base. Makino followed him looking forward to seeing Zoro too as Luffy seemed very excited to meet him since the beginning, Nami followed as she wanted to scope out the base, and Coby followed hoping to stop Luffy.
"Ah, Luffy! Wait!" Coby yelled as he kept up with him, "Please tell me you're joking! Zoro will just k-"
The four froze as all the pedestrians in hearing range freaked out, physically jumping in shock and looking around everywhere when Coby said Zoro's name.
"…Guess we shouldn't say that name out loud," Coby whispered while the two women nodded and Luffy just continued walking towards the base ignoring them.
"Luffy, stop! Did you not see that reaction?! He's a bad person!" Coby said as he tried to hold him back and started telling how Zoro was a demon who would kill everyone, but Luffy just tuned him out.
"I'll see for myself what kind of person he is," he said after Coby was done with his rant and he just facepalmed.
"You're suicidal," Nami sighed as she turned to Makino, "You're not going to stop him?"
"Stop Luffy?" Makino smiled amused, "Once he's made up his mind, not even god will be able to stop him"
"Sounds about right," Nami sighed.
"Anyway Coby, you ready to join the Marines?"
Coby blinked only realizing it now and awkwardly rubbed his head, "I'm a bit nervous actually. I've heard the captain here, Axe-hand Morgan is very str-"
Everyone within hearing range had a much more intense reaction as they jumped in shock and started running away or closed their doors or hid behind something before they started looking around everywhere as if expecting Morgan to show up.
Nami and Makino's eyes narrowed, instantly understanding that Morgan was corrupt and terrorizing everyone while Coby just stared in confusion.
"I understand why they would react like that to Zoro, but why would they react like to that a Marine?"
"Maybe he's a bad guy" Luffy said laughing at the jumpy townspeople.
"What? Don't be ridiculous. He's a Marine. There's no way he's a bad guy"
'Oh right…' Luffy recalled it then, 'Coby believes all Marines are good'
"Listen Coby, just like every other profession, there are good and bad Marines. I've seen some Marines who are worse than some of the worst pirates you've ever heard of. The world isn't black and white, you know"
"Yeah, I agree. There are plenty of bad Marines I've come across too," Nami added, "Don't just blindly assume that all Marines are good people"
"…No way that's true," Coby shook his head, "Marines are good people who protect people and catch bad guys. You guys probably misunderstood or something" In his mind, he thought that since Nami is a thief and Luffy is a pirate, they thought that the Marines are bad. Luffy didn't argue with him knowing he would soon see the truth and Nami didn't care about changing his opinion.
"Just see the world with your own eyes, Coby" Makino chimed in, "And come to your own decisions"
Coby didn't understand and he just pondered over it, trying to figure out what she meant as they walked. The four soon reached the Marine base and Luffy didn't wait anymore and scaled the wall looking for Zoro.
"Luffy! Don't! They'll catch you!" Coby yelled but Luffy didn't even hear him. He spotted green in his vision and immediately leapt inside the courtyard. And there, in the middle of the courtyard, was his Swordman tied up to a cross.
Luffy walked up to him, taking in every single detail of the man before him, from the green hair that indeed look like a cactus to the three gold earrings that glinted in the sunlight. He wore a simple plain white shirt, black pants and had a green haramaki around his waist that was currently missing his three swords.
Roronoa Zoro was suddenly woken up by a feeling that someone was watching him and when he opened his eyes, he recoiled a bit in surprise as a straw hat wearing stranger was standing very close to him, observing him closely.
'People are coming inside now?' he thought in irritation. Ever since he was tied up a couple of days ago, people kept coming to the courtyard and staring at him by peeking over the walls as if he was some zoo animal. He had scared them away with just a glare, but more kept coming and irritating him. And now, someone had even entered the base and was standing right in front of him.
He was about to snap and scare the stranger away too but when he caught his eyes, he froze. Something about this particular stranger was different. The way his eyes shined, the slowly widening smile, the slight shaking of his body, the sheer joy he seemed to radiate upon seeing him… All these things surprised him, but most importantly of all, the look of expectation the stranger had while looking at him left him intrigued. He immediately wanted to rise to the challenge to meet his expectation, even though he had no idea what it was or why he was even feeling that way. The future captain and swordsman stared at each other for a few seconds before Zoro finally broke the silence.
"…What are you looking at?" Zoro asked trying to sound irritated but it came off as a genuine question as he really wanted to know what the stranger was looking at.
"My swordsman," the stranger answered with a grin.
"Huh? What are you talking about? Wait, who even are you?"
"Monkey D. Luffy, Future Pirate King. Nice to meetcha!"
"Pirate King? You're a pirate?"
"Yep! And I want you to join my crew!"
"And why the hell would I do that? I'm a bounty hunter if you didn't know. I hunt pirates"
"Is that your goal?"
"What?"
"Is hunting pirates your goal?"
"Well… no"
"Then why does that matter?"
'Well, he got me there…' "Listen, I'm not going to become a crook. Now, get lost!"
"We just met though, I want to talk more" he whined throwing Zoro completely off guard.
"…Huh?"
"I've been searching for you," Luffy said as he sat down right in front of him. He had finally met Zoro and he definitely did not want to cut their conversation so short. "Were you by any chance at an island called Inizio?"
"Yeah…how di-"
"Really?! When?!" Luffy asked excitedly.
"Uhh, 3-4 days ago I think. I was there right before I came here"
"Damn, missed you by a day or two," Luffy grumbled but was still happy that he had at least predicted correctly that Zoro might have been there. "I make a good detective" he nodded to himself sagely.
"Listen," Zoro sighed having had enough, "You shouldn't be here. The Marines here will arrest you if they find you talking to me, so leave"
"Oh right," he sighed remembering where he was and what was happening. He was just so excited to meet Zoro that he had forgotten it momentarily.
"Here, eat this at least" he said as he shoved an apple he had bought along the way into Zoro's mouth who almost choked on it because of the sudden action. He glared at Luffy, wanting to curse him, but the apple was in the way, so he started chewing it quickly. He could have spit it out but he did not want to waste food, and seeing that only made Luffy's smile wider.
Once he swallowed it, he began to curse at him, "You bas-" but was again cut off when Luffy shoved another apple into his mouth. Luffy grinned mischievously at him while Zoro glared at him.
There were loud shouts coming from behind Luffy too and Zoro glared at the wall where three heads were popping out. One was a pink-haired kid who was panicking and screaming, almost on the verge of hysteria, and when their eyes met, he trembled uncontrollably and fell off the wall. Now, that was a normal reaction he was used to. People just freezing or trembling with fear when they saw him even though he had done absolutely nothing to them. But the reactions of the other two were strange.
Next was an orange-haired girl, who was just studying him critically as if observing what he would do. She seemed to be afraid and her guard was up sure, but she was also putting up a brave front as if saying 'I'm not afraid of you!'
Next was a dark green-haired woman who was a completely different matter as all she radiated was amusement. She suddenly looked down behind her as if something had caught her attention and her head dipped down for a second before she popped up again but another head popped up too.
It was the little kid he had defended from the idiot son's pet. Rika was her name if he remembered correctly, and her face bloomed into a huge smile when she saw him eating something.
And then there was the bastard in front of him, who was stuffing food in his mouth with absolutely no fear. 'So many new reactions…' People usually showed reactions like the pink-haired kid when they saw him, so seeing so many new reactions surprised him.
"I know they'll arrest me if they see me feeding or talking to you," Luffy said bringing Zoro out of his thoughts, "and yet," he smiled, "I'm still choosing to do it"
Zoro glared at him for a couple more seconds before he gave a tired sigh and started chewing with a grateful nod.
"Sorry I let you starve for two whole days," Luffy said as he brought out a third apple from his pocket as soon as Zoro finished his second. He didn't shove it this time and waited for Zoro to ask, who just gave another sigh and nodded.
"It's not your fault… Besides, I can handle it" he said as he took a bite.
"Yeah," Luffy grinned, "I know you can. You can probably go for the whole month without eating and still come out strong!"
"Damn right I can!"
"Shishi yeah, but you don't have to. I know a cook who would kill me if I let anyone starve while I had the power and means to do something about it, so yeah… I'm sorry I'm late"
"…Fine, fine, I don't get it but whatever. Now that you're done, get lost"
"Shishishishi sure, I'll come by later. And then you'll join my crew!"
"Like hell I am! I refuse!"
Luffy got a glint in his eyes as he yelled back, "I refuse your refusal!"
"Wha?! That's not how it works, moron!"
"Shishishishi" he laughed just as he jumped over the wall and landed between a terrified Coby, a curious Nami, an amused Makino and an overexcited kid who instantly hugged his legs while yelling, "Thank you, Big brother!"
'Rika?' He recognized her and patted her head, "What for?"
"For feeding Big brother Zoro! I tried to give him an apple too last night but… he yelled at me to go away…" she trailed off with a sad frown.
Luffy smiled as he ruffled her hair. "People are stupid sometimes, you know. So if you ever see a starving person and they don't have any good reason to starve themselves, you just shove food into their mouths like so!" he said making a shoving motion, which she started mimicking with a giggle.
"Don't teach kids stuff like that," Nami said but had a fond smile as she watched the happy Rika. And at the same time, she couldn't believe that someone who called himself a pirate acted like Luffy.
Luffy soon picked Rika up and placed her on his shoulders while she went 'whee~' before introducing himself. "I'm Luffy. Nice to meetcha!"
"I'm Rika. Nice to…meetcha?" she said the last word tilting her head as if unsure of the way he said 'meet you.'
"Again, don't go corrupting the poor little kid's speaking habits," Nami said in a chiding tone before looking at Rika, "I'm Nami. And it's Nice to meet you"
"Meetcha! Nice to meetcha!" Rika giggled liking the way Luffy said it and Nami gave a light smack on Luffy's head for teaching her that.
"I'm Makino. Nice to meetcha!"
"Not you too, Makino…" Nami sighed while Rika still kept parroting 'meetcha.'
"And this is Coby," Luffy said when it looked like Coby was still unnerved before changing the topic, "Know of any good places to eat, Rika?"
"My mommy owns a restaurant!" she excitedly said, "I'll take you there"
"Just point and I'll go in that direction," Luffy said and Rika nodded with a huge smile and started guiding them.
"Luffy," Coby finally spoke when they began walking, "That was dangerous… What would have happened if Zoro got angry? He would have killed you…"
"Big brother Zoro is not bad!" Rika snapped at him and Coby was taken aback at seeing a little kid getting angry at him.
"What makes you say that?" Makino asked.
"It's my fault he's tied up," Rika said sadly before telling her story of how Helmeppo's pet had tried to attack her, Zoro saving her, Helmeppo threatening to execute her and her mother, and him taking the month-long deal of being tied up in exchange for saving them. "Helmeppo even beat him yesterday… and they didn't even give him any food or water either…"
"Why don't the Marines do anything about this?!" Coby yelled furiously.
"Everyone's too scared of Morgan. So they just follow him…" she replied sadly and then told them of how Morgan rules the town and executes anyone who opposes him. And that finally shattered poor Coby's worldview.
Seeing the sad look Rika had, Luffy decided to cheer her up, "Rika, I'll tell you what. By the time I leave this town, I'll take care of this Morgan problem, okay?"
"Really?!"
"Yep!"
Rika brought her pinky finger forward asking "Promise?"
"Shishi yeah, I promise!" he said linking his finger with hers.
"And Big brother Zoro?"
"Yep, I'll rescue him. He's my friend too"
"And I promise that Morgan will rot in jail," Makino said with a bit of an edge to her voice as she brought her pinky finger towards Rika and made the promise too.
'Did he just promise to fight a Marine captain for a stranger he just met?' Nami wondered. She thought of the island they had met at and remembered the kids there thanking him too. 'Does he have a soft spot for kids? Yeah, that must be it… but even still, no one just does that for a stranger. Helping others in small ways sure but to risk their own life? Who does that? And the worst part of it all, he calls himself a pirate. A fucking pirate!… this guy makes no sense.'
Coby was wondering what Luffy meant by taking care of Morgan and grew fearful of what he might do but that was just a small part of his mind. The majority of his thoughts were focused on how someone who called themselves as Marines were treating people this harshly and evilly.
They soon reached the restaurant and they had a nice meal with nothing eventful happening except maybe Luffy befriending Ririka and a bunch of other people too. Once done, they came out of the restaurant and were about to go to a bit of a secluded area to discuss what to do when the pedestrians on the streets suddenly started lining up on either side of the street while bowing down.
The four watched in curiosity as to what was happening when Ririka came out of the restaurant to warn them. "Looks like Helmeppo is making rounds again. Just keep silent and bow down when he passes"
"What?" Coby gaped while Luffy, Nami and Makino internally went, 'Hell no!'
Helmeppo soon showed up, with his ugly purple suit and excess of accessories adorning his fingers and neck, walking like he owned the street as he was flanked by four Marines. The crowd silently bowed down while he walked laughing smugly and hitting a couple of people for no reason as he passed by.
When he almost came up to them, Luffy whispered "Play along" to Nami before stepping forwards. Ririka and the crowd panicked but Luffy didn't care as he waved at Helmeppo with a smile. "Yo!"
"Who dares to approach me?!"
"Can you settle a bet between me and my friend here?" he said as he put an arm around Nami's shoulder and pulled her forwards, who just went along with it. Helmeppo was confused and was about to dismiss them when Luffy spoke up again, "It's a bet for a million berries" And that definitely got his attention.
"Oh? A million you say? I'll take a cut for being the judge then…let's say about fifty percent?"
"Sure" Luffy accepted and Helmeppo grinned smugly.
"Alright, let's hear it"
"I say that there's no way Zoro will be let free at the end of the month," Luffy said pointing at himself and then pointed at Nami, "But my idiot friend here thinks that you will let him go. Who's correct?"
"Yeah, you will let him go right?" Nami asked playing along while also putting an arm around Luffy's waist and started secretly pinching him for calling her an idiot. The others behind them like Coby and Ririka could see it though and were bewildered, while Makino had a hard time holding her smile back.
"There's no way he will, idiot" Luffy argued.
"He will. And you're the idiot!" she said pinching him harder, while also feeling that something was strange with his skin.
"Let's see what he says then," Luffy said and the two turned to Helmeppo with a questioning look.
The idiot son just gave an annoying, grating smug laugh which made Nami almost whip out her shock staff at him, but held it in knowing Luffy was up to something.
"Of course, I'm not letting him go!" Helmeppo declared, "That stupid beast Zoro and your idiot friend here are delusional if they think I'll let him go! If he doesn't die by himself because of starvation in a month, I'll just have him killed myself! Hahahahahaha!"
"Liar!" Rika yelled jumping out onto the street next to Luffy, "You said you'll let him go!"
"Rika! No!" her mother yelled as she jumped out and hugged her close, shielding her from anything Helmeppo might throw at her.
Helmeppo gave an unimpressed glance at them before he turned to one of the Marines behind him, "Hey, teach those two a lesson to never cross me" and without waiting for an answer, turned to Luffy, "Now, you owe me half a million berr-"
Helmeppo didn't get to finish his sentence as a punch landed squarely on his face courtesy of Luffy's fist which made him go flying back and land on his butt.
All the surrounding people stared in shell-shocked horror as they watched Morgan's son being hit and thought that Morgan would retaliate soon. The four Marines flanking Helmeppo were also equally shocked and it took them a second to realize what had happened before two went to help Helmeppo while two more pointed their rifles at Luffy.
"Y-you hit me… HOW DARE YOU HIT ME?!" Helpmeppo screamed with tears in his eyes and blood flowing out from his nose and mouth. "I'm Captain Morgan's son! I'll tell Daddy to execute you!"
"Fight me yourself coward," Luffy said as he grabbed the rifles out of the two Marines' hands before they could realize it and threw them away while not taking his eyes off of Helmeppo. The idiot son started mouthing off about how he would regret hitting him when Luffy took another step towards him, but Coby stopped him.
"No, don't do it Luffy! They're Marines!" Coby yelled as he got in front of Luffy and pushed him back.
"So what if they're Marines? Scum is scum no matter who you are"
"No! But they're Marines. You'll have the entire Marine base after you!"
Luffy paused looking down at Coby desperately trying to stop him and sighed. "Coby, is this the kind of Marine you want to become?" he asked staring right into his eyes, "Like Morgan who just abuses his authority and executes the people he should protect? Or like this idiot son," he said pointing at Helmeppo, "who uses his father's name as a shield to do harass anyone he wants? Or like those four," he said pointing at the Marines who were flanking Helmeppo, "who just stand by and do nothing because they're too scared?"
Coby lost the strength in his arms as Luffy went on and by the end, his hands were drooping by his sides and he just stood there with his eyes wide open.
Luffy continued, "Will you kill innocent civilians if your higher-ups orders you to kill them? Do you just want to become a Marine for the sake of becoming a Marine or do you want to become a Marine to protect people?"
Coby stared vacantly at nothing as he alternated his gaze between Luffy, the idiot son, the Marines and the people of Shellstown, who were also looking at Luffy with shock.
Helmeppo, who was just crying and had not heard a single word, interrupted them with a scream, "You're a dead man walking! I'll have daddy execute you and then you'll be begging for mercy!"
He yelled at the Marines to support him up and take him away and they quickly did as ordered. One of them however, the one who was told to take care of Rika, faced Luffy and the other townspeople and deeply bowed down apologizing, "…I-I'm sorry…" before going away.
As soon as they left, Rika came up and jumped onto Luffy grabbing onto his vest with shining eyes, "That was so cool, Big brother Luffy! The way you punched him!"
"Shishishi you liked that? I should have punched him a couple more times then"
Rika enthusiastically nodded but Ririka soon grabbed her with worry. "Look, you guys have been great," she said to Luffy with worry, "But Morgan will soon retaliate. You guys should get off the island as soon as you can!"
She then dragged Rika into the restaurant despite her protests. The little girl caught Luffy's eyes and lifted her pinky while mouthing 'Promise' and Luffy also raised his pinky in return and nodded, which brought a smile to her face.
The other civilians also quickly started dispersing when Makino came up to him with an amused smile and whispered, "If your grandpa heard what all you said just now, he would drag you to become a Marine"
Luffy paled. "Please don't say a word"
"Hehehe… well go and quickly take care of the corrupt bastard. I need to use the communications room at the Marine base to make some calls"
"Sure!"
He caught Nami's eyes and saw that she was staring wide-eyed at him. She was in the same state since he had punched the idiot son and heard the rest in abject shock, his words making her remember another Marine she knew who loved tangerines. Luffy gestured towards the base indicating that it was time to steal the map as he would cause a distraction now and she nodded before they both started making their way towards the base.
"What are you, Luffy?" Nami sighed, "What kind of pirate says things like that?"
Luffy gave her a glance as he thought about what to say but shrugged not wanting to explain anything. "You come to your conclusion, Nami"
She nodded not saying anything more and when they reached the base, Nami went towards the main building while Luffy went to the courtyard to see Zoro.
"You again?" Zoro asked when he saw Luffy come up to him. "Don't you have anything else to do?"
"Nope, I'm here to break you out this time and make you join my crew"
"I already said no! I have my own mission in life. And I'm not gonna stoop so low and become a despicable pirate"
"I'm not asking you to become a despicable pirate. I want you to join my pirate crew"
"Same thing"
"People already think of you as an evil demon, so what does it even matter?"
"I don't care what others say. I haven't done anything I've regretted in my past and the same goes for my future too"
"I don't care! You're joining my crew!"
"LISTEN TO OTHERS, MORON! DON'T DECIDE THINGS FOR ME!" Zoro finally lost it and snapped.
"Where are your swords?" Luffy asked changing the subject.
"…That stupid son took it," Zoro said suspiciously, "Why do you wanna know?"
"Shishishishi" Luffy grinned mischievously, "I'll go get your swords but if you want them back, you'll have to join me"
"YOU LITTLE! COME BACK HERE!"
"Shishishishi"
"Hey, stop!" Zoro yelled at him but Luffy just went towards the base making him think that he was an idiot for straight up storming the base.
Luffy just ran to the entrance of the base but saw that Nami was still hanging outside at the back of the building instead of sneaking in and when he caught her eyes, she shook her head. 'Not able to slip in huh?'
The Marines were throughout the base unlike in the story where they were all gathered up on the roof to see the unveiling of Morgan's statute, so this would be more difficult now. He thought about what to do for a second before he ran straight into the base and stood in front of a Marine. "Hey!"
"Uhh hello"
"Can you tell me where Morgan's statue is"
"Oh that's still being made. It should be completed within a couple of weeks but you can still see its current status… it's at the back" he said pointing to a courtyard at the back of the base.
He thanked the guy and then ran to the back where Nami was also present.
"What're you doing?"
"Oh, hang around the building and get ready to enter. I'm gonna cause a distraction" Luffy said as he spotted the statue.
Nami just nodded while he ran to the statue where a sculptor was still working on the hand. He felt bad for the sculptor for what he was about to do, but he wanted to destroy the statue because it was fun. He stood in front of the statue while facing the base, took a deep breath and shouted. "MORGAN! COME OUTSIDE AND WATCH WHAT I DO TO YOUR STATUE!"
Not even a second later, Morgan 's head popped out of a window and so did many Marines on the various floors.
"WHO ARE YOU?! AND WHAT DO YOU MEAN?!" Morgan growled.
"It's him, daddy! The guy who punched me!" Helmeppo, who had also put his head out the window, cried pointing at him. "That's the man I wanted you to kill!"
"Shut up, you disgraceful brat!" Morgan swatted his son away quite cruelly while glaring at Luffy.
"Watch" Luffy kept full eye contact with Morgan as he raised a fist and smashed the statue without any warning. Cracks formed and the upper part of the statue separated from the bottom part before falling forwards and getting smashed to pieces…and the whole base trembled in fear not able to believe their eyes.
"Ahahahahaha!" Zoro laughed out loud from where he was tied up. He couldn't see what was happening but he could hear them all and understood the situation. 'He's fearless at least' Zoro thought with a bit of respect while Nami, on the other hand, facepalmed at his recklessness.
"Sorry" Luffy softly apologized to the sculptor who just sighed. "It's okay. I hated working on it anyway"
"HOW DARE YOU?! Destroying that statue is the same as disrespecting me!" Morgan roared, "MEN! CAPTURE THAT MAN AND BRING HIM TO ME!"
"Too scared to come after me yourself, Morgan?" Luffy provoked him and he fell for it.
"Fine! I'll kill you myself!" he growled before he started making his way down the stairs.
Luffy then eyed Nami and she understood that he had made Morgan come out of his office so that she could slip inside. She nodded hiding herself and when Morgan walked out of the base, she slipped in and started going towards his office. The others were either out in the courtyard or glued to the window to see the action, so she had an easy time slipping in.
"Boy!" Morgan growled as he stomped up to Luffy, "Who do you think you are to do this to me?!"
Luffy just ignored him and pointed at the sky in surprise, "Look! It's a huge snake!"
"What?!" Morgan and the rest of the Marines' eyes whipped upwards and when they realized they had been tricked, they lowered their gaze only to find Luffy missing.
"COWARD! MEN! SEARCH THE AREA AND BRING HIM TO ME!"
"Yessir!"
—
Nami was in Morgan's office fiddling with the safe when she suddenly heard a voice from behind her saying "What are you doing?"
Before she could let out a reflexive yelp, however, a hand covered her mouth and she realized who it was.
"Asshole!" she elbowed Luffy glaring at him.
Luffy chuckled as he let her go, "You always scream and give away your position when you're supposed to be stealthy"
"It's your damn fault for surprising me!"
"You said 'It's your fault' again. That's another shot I have to take now"
"Ugh just let me work in peace," she said as she got back to breaking open the safe. "Go cause distractions. This shouldn't take too long"
"Eh, it's fine. Morgan's office is the last place they'll look in"
Nami sighed, "Can't believe you just challenged the captain himself just to cause a distraction. You're not at all subtle huh?"
"No, I'm not" Luffy said as he watched the few Marines who were lying on the floor, unconscious. She was growing bolder with her shock staff and he loved to see it. He was also amazed by her hands as they seemed to move like magic over the safe's lock and soon, it was open.
"Yess!" Nami cheered before she started going through all the documents and finally found a map. "Here it is! A map to the Grand Line!"
'Ooh did Buggy not get it yet?' he wondered as he picked up the other documents in the safe and put them into his sling bag, but when Nami opened up the map, they saw Buggy's message was sprawled on it saying he had taken the real map.
Nami's eye twitched in annoyance as she muttered, "Damn pirates"
"Shishishi well, I guess we go to him next and take the map"
"Yeah, we have to" Nami sighed. "And why did you just steal the other documents here?"
"Reasons" Luffy said mysteriously and she sighed knowing it would be for something stupid. She then noticed the three swords in his hands, "You use swords?"
"No no, these are Zoro's swords," Luffy said as he showed them to her. It was quite easy for him to find it. He remembered how in the story, he slingshots from Helmeppo's room directly in front of the tied-up Zoro, so he just looked in the rooms that overlooked the courtyard and found Helmeppo's room without even having to meet him.
A sudden gunshot ran out from outside and Luffy quickly ran to the other side of the building to look out the window to see what was happening. Coby was next to the tied-up Zoro clutching his arm as he bled while Morgan and the other Marines were gathering up in the courtyard. Looked like Coby had shown up just like in the story and things had ended up the same way, only Morgan had shown up much quicker as he was already on the ground. Morgan looked pissed and seemed like he wanted to take his anger out on someone and that someone was Coby and Zoro.
"You two are also rebelling?!" Morgan growled, his veins bulging, "I'll execute you!" He started walking up to them, intending to kill them himself and Luffy jumped onto the windowsill intending to jump in.
"Hey! What are you doing?!" Nami yelled with worry as she came up from behind him and grabbed his leg. "This is the third floor idiot! You'll die!"
And that loud shout from her alerted some of the Marines in adjacent rooms, and they quickly came in. "Found him!"
"Guess you're jumping out with me," Luffy said as he wrapped a hand around Nami's waist.
"Wait stop! We're on the third fl-" she tried to stop him in a panic but Luffy jumped out and she felt herself falling.
"Ahhhh!" she screamed closing her eyes and tightening her hold on Luffy as she thought she was done for but he soon landed on the ground gently. Nami didn't feel like she was falling anymore and slowly opened an eye, only to find that she was on the ground. She looked up to see the amused smile Luffy was giving and a volcano erupted inside her head as she wrung his neck out, "You! Fucking! Moron! Idiot! Suicidal! Bastard! Asshole! Never do that again while carrying me!"
Luffy laughed as he was being shaken which only infuriated her more. "Okay, okay, calm down. Look around you first"
Nami paused having a deja-vu of him saying the same thing before and slowly turned to look at her surroundings, and flinched when she saw at least three dozen Marines and also Axe-hand Morgan himself staring at her.
"There you are, you coward!" Morgan yelled in anger forgetting about Coby and Zoro.
"Oh hey…" she awkwardly said to the Marines before turning back to Luffy who just went "Idiot~"
"You're the idiot!" she whisper-hissed before putting her hands around him again, "Do the thing"
"What thing?"
"Quit playing dumb! You know!"
"Okay okay," Luffy placated and Nami felt a rush of wind before she was behind a building away from all the Marines.
"Seriously, how do you do this?" Nami said letting go.
"Long explanation, I'll tell you later. Need to get to Zoro now. Bye"
Luffy soru'd his way to Zoro and Coby's side almost shocking them when he appeared suddenly.
"Luffy!" Coby yelped happily.
"My eyes can't keep up with your movements…" Zoro said with a glint in his eyes, "You're fast"
"YOU BRAT!" Morgan interrupted but Luffy tuned him out.
"We can talk about that later. For now," Luffy used one of Zoro's swords, not Wado, to slash the ropes tying him before presenting all three to him. "My name is Monkey D. Luffy, the man who is going to become the Pirate King!"
Zoro stared into Luffy's eyes as he massaged his freed wrists and the look of expectation was back. He had heard from Coby about what he had done to Helmeppo upon learning that he had no intention of letting him go at the end of the month and also heard how Luffy was extremely serious about wanting to become the Pirate King.
'Ah, so that's what that was' Zoro finally understood what the look of expectation Luffy had was. Expectation that he had found someone with just as crazy a dream as his own. And also the resolve to match it. He had told others about his dream before, so he just thought that Luffy had heard it from someone and was hence, looking for him. He understood from Luffy's declaration that he was either going to become the Pirate King or die trying. There was no other outcome in his life…Just like him.
Zoro smirked as he took his swords back from Luffy's hands. He unsheathed and held two swords in a cross above his head just as an axe landed on it but didn't take his eyes off of Luffy. Other things were happening around them, but either didn't care and ignored everything.
"The name's Roronoa Zoro," he said as he pushed the axe off of him. He then unsheathed Wado and pointed it at Luffy's neck, "I've defied the Marines so I'm an outlaw anyway. So yes, I'll join your crew. But I'll be striving for my own goal of becoming the World's Greatest Swordsman. And if you ever get in the way of my dream, I'll have you cut open your stomach"
The image of a bloody Zoro saying 'Nothing happened' flashed in Luffy's mind and he swore not to let that happen as he nodded, "Good. If you can't even achieve something so small, I'll be embarrassed to call you my crew mate"
"Heh. Well said"
The two stared at each other for a few more moments, revelling in the joy of finding someone who had just as crazy a dream and just as crazy a resolve as the other before they both jumped diagonally and an axe got lodged into the ground where they were just standing.
Their whole conversation had taken place right in the middle of a few dozen Marines and a very angry Morgan. He had started taunting Luffy for running away and said a lot of things, but Luffy and Zoro were too lost in their own little world and tuned everything out. Coby too was freaking out but looking at the two seemingly having an important conversation, he held himself back from interfering. And Nami was just muttering, "What's the idiot doing?" with a worried look on her face.
When it became clear that Luffy wasn't paying attention to whatever he was saying, Morgan grew further enraged that he was being disrespected so much and finally lost it and attacked them.
But Zoro had blocked him and then pushed him off which had him staggering backwards, not even bothering to give him a glance, and just continued talking with the straw hat wearing bastard. Morgan grew way more furious and attacked them again, and finally, they had dodged and acknowledged his presence.
"Looks like this guy is pissed. What happened?" Zoro asked casually.
"Shishishi I think it's because I broke his statue"
Coby, Nami and every Marine there wanted to scream that it was their fault for ignoring and disrespecting him, but honestly, the Marines enjoyed watching Morgan being treated in such a way.
"YOU! STOP RUNNING AWAY!" Morgan growled pointing his axe at Luffy but Luffy looked at him with a bored expression. Honestly, he could take out everyone in East Blue with a single punch, but he felt like he was bullying them. He was someone who had experienced and learned from the Grand Line, so coming to East Blue and flaunting his powers to fight here felt like he was almost abusing them.
He had absolutely no will to fight such weak opponents and he sighed knowing he wouldn't get a good fight until he was in the Grand Line. He still wasn't that good at using the Rokushiki techniques while wearing sea stone, so he used techniques like Soru or airwalk every chance he got so that he could get better, but during fights, he didn't use any technique other than basic kicking and punching. Besides, if he just took out everyone by himself, it would ruin a lot of potential growth for everyone else.
Morgan, having had enough of Luffy disrespecting him, stopped and looked at his men. "Shoot him!" was all he said and all the rifles were pointed at Luffy. Zoro grabbed Coby and started running to take cover and thought that Luffy would do the same, but Luffy just stood in place.
The Marines fired before Zoro could say anything while Luffy was thinking that it was a good time to train Iron Body while wearing sea stone. The others however thought he had frozen up in fear.
"LUFFY!" Nami yelled out coming out from her hiding spot horrified to see him getting riddled with so many bullets. Zoro and Coby, who were thinking that he was obviously going to run too, looked on horrified, "Luffy!" "Idiot!"
But the worry soon turned to bewildered shock when they saw no blood spilling and Luffy just standing still. In fact, all the bullets just stopped at his skin before falling down and seeing that, the Marines became hysterical.
"What is he?!" / "Bullets aren't working!" / "Is he wearing armour?!"
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU?!" Zoro, Coby and a majority of the Marines screamed in unison looking at the crushed bullets fall off him, while Nami also had the same question.
"Hmm? I'm the man who will become the Pirate King"
"THAT'S NOT WHAT WE MEANT!" they screamed in unison again. "AND YOU KNOW IT!" Nami added knowing that he was again pretending like he didn't understand what exactly they were asking.
"Shishishishi you guys are funny," he laughed not answering their questions.
"He's probably wearing armour idiots," Morgan said getting everyone's attention, "If guns aren't working, then use swords. Kill him! And that Zoro over there too!"
"Now you're talking," Zoro smirked as he watched the few dozen Marines discarding their rifles and picking up swords. Some of them had treated him like shit for the past two days when he was tied up, so he was glad he got a chance to let loose. He unsheathed only two of his swords as he eyed all the Marines…and then they began dropping like flies.
A diagonal slash here, a horizontal slash there, a double slash to take out five Marines at once… Zoro was a beast in battle with not only strength but amazing technique with his swords and Luffy understood that he was definitely one of the strongest people in East Blue. Luffy wanted to see the three-sword style in action but he was using only two swords as the opponents here weren't challenging in the least and he wasn't starving like in the story either. By the time he had taken down around 20 marines in less than a minute, the rest had backed off being too scared.
Luffy was just standing in place watching Zoro fight and when some Marines did try to attack him, he just broke their swords first before punching them and that was it. Seeing a few Marines fall at Luffy's feet, the others dared not go near him either, being too scared.
"T-There's n-no way we can beat them! T-they're too strong!" one of the Marines stammered and soon, a few others also voiced out similar thoughts.
Morgan felt a tick growing on his head that his subordinates were so useless and roared "Whoever just said that, put a gun to your head and pull the trigger now!"
They looked at him frozen in shock, but Morgan glared and ordered it again, "That's an order from your superior! Do it now!"
And to the others' surprise, the few Marines who had whined earlier hesitated a bit before actually pointing the guns towards their own heads with shaky hands.
"Are these guys idiots?" Zoro scoffed as he started running towards them hoping to stop them but was stopped by Luffy resting a hand on his shoulder. "Wait, Zoro"
He saw Luffy looking at the pink-haired kid with some sort of look he couldn't quite understand but decided to trust his new captain and waited to see where this goes.
Coby was having a meltdown. He just couldn't believe that marines could be so cruel. 'Will you kill innocent civilians if your higher-ups order you to?' he remembered what Luffy had said and in this situation, the higher-up was ordering his own men to kill themselves. 'Do I want to be this kind of Marine? An asshole like Morgan or a coward like the rest of them? …..NO! I want to protect people! Not hurt them. This guy isn't a Marine!' he stared daggers at Morgan before he turned to Luffy and froze.
Luffy was looking right back at him with a questioning look as if asking 'what will you do Coby?' and he nodded knowing what he wanted to do. "STTTTOPPP!" he roared at the top of his lungs. All eyes turned to him but he didn't falter under the pressure.
"This isn't what Marines are supposed to do! Marines are meant to help people. Protect and enforce Justice. Not harass and abuse their authority like this asshole here!" he spat pointing at Morgan.
"SHUT UP! STATUS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING! AND AS THE PERSON WITH THE HIGHEST STATUS HERE, I'M THE JUSTICE HERE! WHATEVER I SAY IS RIGHT!" Morgan roared back thinking how dare some random kid talk back to him.
"NO! YOU'RE WRONG! Do you all really want to follow this guy?!" Coby yelled addressing the others, "Kill innocent civilians if he orders you to?! Watch him abuse his power?!… I came here because I wanted to join the Marines and catch bad guys and enforce justice! That's what a Marine is! YOU," he growled at Morgan, "ARE NOT A MARINE!"
The ones who had pointed a gun towards their own heads slowly put their hands down. The Marine who had apologized to the townspeople earlier was the first to agree and voice his thoughts out. "The kid's right! I hate what we're doing here!"
And that broke the gate as a cascade of shouts opposing Morgan began. "I don't want to follow this guy!"/ "I hate him!"/ "This is not what I sighed up for!"/ "Let's detain him together!"/ "Let's lock him up and then report him!"
"EVERYONE WHO JUST SAID THAT IS GOING TO BE EXECUTED!" Morgan roared and that actually put the fear back in them. He smirked internally at seeing them falter and knew he just had to kill one person to bring them all in line again. He started walking towards the first one who had opposed him while saying, "You're first!", and they all gulped in fear.
A sudden gunshot rang out and a bullet landed right at Morgan's feet making him freeze. He slowly and angrily turned towards where the bullet had come in from and saw the disrespectful pink-haired kid holding a rifle.
"You're not killing anyone anymore," Coby declared, his voice resolute, despite his body shaking like a leaf and his eyes filling up with tears. And seeing such a terrified civilian kid standing up to Morgan, the other Marines felt ashamed of themselves.
One Marine that Luffy recognized as Ripper lifted his rifle up and pointed it at Morgan next, "Enough is enough, Morgan. We won't listen to you anymore"
And that started a chain reaction of others pointing their own rifles at him and before long, all the Marines in the base were aiming at Morgan.
"Yes!" / "Fucking about time!" / " I've wanted to do this ever since I first saw this bastard!" / "He can't do anything if everyone's opposing him!"
Nami looked on in amazement as everything played out. She had seen Coby and had understood that he was, to be blunt, a wimp. He was too scared to just escape from the pirate ship he was captured on. He was too scared to look her in the eye in the beginning. He was too scared to even just look at Zoro. And now? He was having a roaring match with a big, strong Marine Captain who everyone was terrified of, shot at him, and had even inspired the others to do the same.
'Where did he suddenly get that much courage from?' she wondered but already knew the answer. She looked at the person responsible and saw that he had a wide ecstatic smile on his face. It was also him who had placed the rifle in Coby's hands. 'Luffy. The strange pirate. Who saves random people. Risks his life for strangers he just met. Promises little kids that he'll save them. Tells people to follow their dreams and gives a hand in helping them achieve it, even if that means that they'll end up as enemies. Inspires people to stand up for themselves. And looks so happy when it happens…'
She was intrigued by the existence that was Luffy and just couldn't understand how he worked. She unconsciously touched her shoulder where that fucking tattoo was branded, wondering if he would help her too but instantly squashed that thought. Even if Luffy wanted to help and even with how strong he was, there was no way he could stand up to a Fishman. She didn't want to admit it, but she was starting to see him as a friend. He already treated her like she was one of his closest friends, so she couldn't help but feel the same too. And that was with just spending time with him for over a day.
And considering how much she distrusted people and never had a friend ever since the day her mother died, that was shocking to her. And given that, there was no way she was dragging Luffy into her problems… But currently, seeing the joyous smile on Luffy's face, she forgot about everything and her own lips curled up into a genuine smile.
Zoro didn't know how Coby was before all this but knew that Luffy was very happy at whatever had happened. He didn't understand completely but just shrugged and decided to get the full story later. When Nami told him all about it later in the day, he was truly amazed too that someone like that could transform so quickly and that his captain had the power to inspire courage like that.
Luffy was the happiest and most surprised of all people as he watched everything play out. He was expecting Coby to stand up for himself sure, but Coby had gone above and beyond his expectations, and had actually even inspired the other Marines to rebel.
"How dare you oppose the person with the highest status here?!" Morgan growled, his veins bulging, "That's how the world works, kid! The person with the most status, the highest rank is always in the right! I'll fucking kill you all for this mutiny!" he swung his axe at a fence and it got sliced cleanly through, with even some of the soil in the ground getting dislodged. And that again terrified a lot of Marines as many rifles went down immediately.
Morgan menacingly walked towards Coby, who stood his ground glaring daggers at Morgan even though his legs were shaking.
"I don't care if I die, but I'll never accept someone like you as a Marine!"
"Insolent brat!" Morgan swung his axe straight down on Coby and that's when Luffy stepped in with a huge smile and deflected Morgan's axe with a kick while looking at Coby. "Shishishi that was great, Coby. Leave the rest to me!"
Coby collapsed to his knees, all tension draining out of him, as he nodded with a grateful smile.
"You punk! Who even the hell are you?!" Morgan roared, "You don't even have any rank or status here! I'm Captain Axe-hand Morgan, the man with the highest status here!" he said as he swung his axe at Luffy.
Luffy side-stepped and kicked him in the chin making him stagger back. "Hey Morgan, tell me. Have you met a Celestial Dragon before?"
"Don't mention the Gods of this world with that pathetic lowly mouth of yours!" he yelled looking offended.
"Yeah, makes sense" Luffy sighed as he kicked him in the chin again which made him stagger backwards and made him fall flat on his back. All his talk of the one with the highest status being the justice, them being always right, him collecting tribute from the townspeople… it all sounded exactly like the Celestial Dragons. 'He probably worships them' he concluded but shrugged it off.
The others were whispering about how Morgan was losing and so, he thought it was about time he should end the fight. Just before he knocked him out, another person shouted getting everyone's attention.
"Stop!" It was Helmeppo this time and he had a gun pointed at Nami's head, and Luffy stared at her questioningly.
"Weren't you hiding?"
"I came out when I got shocked that you were getting riddled with bullets… It's your fault!"
"Another shot!" Luffy chuckled and Nami just sighed shaking her head in disbelief. 'Does this guy ever take anything seriously?'
"Hey! Stop talking like I'm not here!" Helmeppo yelled offended. "You make one wrong move and I'll blow her brains out!"
"Yeah yeah," Luffy sighed about to use Soru, but he saw Nami discreetly taking out the shock staff from behind her back. He saw her about to swing it at him and his heart skipped a bit. 'Nami! No!'
He instantly used Soru to get to her, but all she did was duck down and swing the staff at his knees making him stagger forward before she smashed the butt of the staff on his forehead. He fell forwards unconscious and Nami stood back up but bumped into Luffy's chest.
"Oh…hey," she said but was confused when she saw that his hand was very close to the side of her face and also saw that he had a stupid look on his face. "…I didn't need help in taking care of an idiot like that"
"Ah no, it's not that. I thought you were going to shock him," Luffy let out a sigh of relief as he brought his hand down. 'Stupid Leo's memories…'
"His finger was on the trigger, idiot. If I had shocked him, his fingers would have clenched and a shot would have…been fired…" she trailed off finally understanding why he had appeared before her. He thought that she would shock the idiot son and thus, had come to shield her in case the bullet went off by mistake. And his hand that was to the side of her face also made sense. 'He was shielding me from the bullet…'
Before she could think further, a shadow loomed over them and she saw Morgan standing behind Luffy with his axe coming down on Luffy's head. Before she could even react to it, she saw Morgan suddenly freeze midway and then stagger back a couple of steps before he collapsed on his back.
"Shishi good job, Zoro" Luffy said as he turned back and Nami finally saw Zoro standing right behind Luffy.
"No problem, Captain" Zoro said as he sheathed his swords halfway before looking at the rest of the Marines. "Anyone else wants to fight?"
They all looked on in shock at the fallen Morgan, then looked at each other before bursting out in joy. "MORGAN IS DOWN! HURRAY!"
"Didn't think so" Zoro nodded and sheathed his swords completely.
"He's so cool and badass, right Nami?" Luffy grinned.
"Wait, he agreed to join you?"
"Yeah," Zoro answered coming up to them. "So she is on your crew too, I assume?"
"Yep! Zoro, meet Nami, our navigator!"
"Temporary navigator" Nami corrected.
Zoro looked at Luffy questioningly, but he just shrugged, "She just likes to say that, don't worry"
Nami stamped on his foot, "Don't go deciding things for others, idiot!"
"Looks like that's a theme huh?" Zoro sighed. "So how many more members have you got?"
"You and Nami"
"…huh?"
"Welcome to the life of the strangest pirate you'll ever meet, Zoro" Nami said as she patted his shoulder with pity. "I just met him yesterday and it's been a strange journey ever since"
Zoro gulped, "…At least tell me we have a ship"
"Small one-cabin boat" Nami answered.
"Oh god…" Zoro facepalmed, "What the hell did I just get myself into?"
"Shishishi we'll get all that, don't worry. We'll get the best ship, pick up a couple more cremates and then we'll be off to the Grand Line!"
Zoro sighed, "Fine fine… now, about how you withstood bullets? How exactly did you do that?"
"Oh yeah! I wanted to know too!" Nami piped up but she didn't wait for an answer and leaned closer and looked down his shirt. Not seeing any armour, she lifted his shirt and started to feel his skin to see if there was some camouflaged armour.
"Hmm definitely no armour…" she trailed off but didn't stop touching his skin as it felt very strange. She had noticed it earlier when she was pinching him too, but it almost felt like his skin was…she tried to think of a word as she ran her hand on his skin pinching and almost kneading it and finally a word popped up in her head. 'Malleable…his skin feels malleable for some reason' she thought while also knowing that it was a strange way to describe someone's skin…but that was definitely the feeling she got.
"Umm Nami?" Luffy said hesitantly and only then did she come out of her daze and looked at his face, "I'm sorry if I gave you some wrong signals… I'm usually a very touchy person and I've been told that I invade people's personal space a lot… but I truly don't mean anything by it. I do it to everyone"
"…Yeah, I have noticed that… but why are you bringing it up now? And what signal?"
"Umm…" Luffy just awkwardly looked down at himself. Her eyes also followed his gaze and only then did she realize that her own fingers were running all over his abs. It definitely looked like she was feeling him up, and quite aggressively too.
She instantly retracted her hands back, her face reddening in embarrassment as she began trying to explain herself, "I-I wasn't feeling you up. I-I just had a strange thought about your skin that's all!"
"Thoughts of wanting to jump him?" Zoro asked amused. And that earned him Nami's first smack.
"No, you idiot! His skin just seemed…" she wanted to say malleable but knew how strange that sounded, so she hesitated.
"Rubbery?" Makino offered suddenly interjecting into the conversation. She had seen the entire thing play out from the sidelines and finally interjected when she saw Luffy teasing Nami again.
"Yes!" Nami nodded vigorously, "Malleable, rubbery! Yes, his skin feels like that!"
"Makino~" Luffy whined.
"Hehe you tease her too much, Luffy"
"So you know exactly what I'm talking about then?!"
"Ah yeah, my skin is just like that"
"So you were again pretending not to know what I was trying to say?!" Nami yelled getting angry and started beating the shit out of him. "You bastard!"
"Shishishishi"
"This is gonna be a thing huh?" Zoro sighed rubbing his head where Nami had hit him.
—
"It's like I'm hearing about two different people," Zoro said looking at Coby, "Good job, kid. I'm sure you'll do great as a Marine"
"Zoro…" Coby breathed teary-eyed as he nodded resolutely, "Yes! I definitely will!"
"Eat up as much as you want!" Ririka said as she placed more plates of food at their table which was occupied by Luffy, Nami, Zoro, Coby and a very happy Rika who was sitting on top of the table right in front of Luffy as he fed her.
The surrounding tables were also filled with joyous townspeople and people were even crowding outside to see the heroes who had saved their town. And everyone was praising Coby for basically inspiring the other Marines to stand up for themselves and his face had gone bright red.
"Shishishi Coby, you sure have grown!"
"I want to say that we just met you yesterday and that's not enough time to judge if a person has grown or not," Nami chimed in, "But I guess I have to reevaluate that belief because you definitely did grow so much in just a day. You were so wimpy just yesterday but today, you stood up to a scary Marine captain that everyone was terrified of. That was really impressive, Coby"
"It's all because of you Luffy," Coby hastily said wanting to let everyone know that Luffy was the real hero here, "If it weren't for you, I would still be toiling away on Alvida's ship…"
"All you gotta do now is get stronger," Luffy said and wondered if him showing up three weeks early might affect Coby's meeting with Garp. Deciding to be on the safe side he added, "And the fastest way to get stronger is to find a good teacher. So, when you see someone strong, jump at the chance to train under them okay? You'll do great, Coby" Luffy patted Coby's shoulder leaving the rest up to him and Coby nodded resolutely.
"So what now?" Zoro asked changing the topic.
"Hmm we need to make a few stops, but we'll soon head to the Grand Line"
"What?! Don't be reckless! The Grand Line is a dangerous place," Coby started and continued ranting about all the horrors of the Grand Line. The surrounding people, who were listening in, also told them of some of the tales they had heard and Luffy was just amused by all the stories. Sure, they were all crazy stories like how whirlpools instantaneously formed with no warning, massive Sea Kings that could devour ships, crazy lightning and weather, and for the most part, they were actually true. But they were still relatively tame compared to how dangerous the Grand Line actually was.
He didn't comment anything and just let the people discuss what they wanted until Zoro brought up the topic of how Coby should worry about himself as he had been on a pirate ship for two years and Coby saying that he had shot at a Marine captain too, so he didn't know what would happen. Luffy promised that they would be friends regardless and Coby gave a heartfelt thanks to Luffy, Nami and Zoro for making him resolve to follow his dream.
But everything quietened down when the Marines eventually showed up.
"Excuse me!" Ripper said getting everyone's attention, "We heard you guys are pirates. Is that true?"
"Yep, we're pirates"
"Well, even if you are pirates, we would like to thank you on behalf of the Marines." he said bowing down to them. "But you are sti-"
Luffy knew the townspeople would speak up against the Marines if Ripper asked them to leave and not wanting to sour the relationship between them, he cut him off as he got up, "I think it's about time we left. I'll go check on Makino and then we'll leave. Thanks for the food, Ririka"
Ripper was surprised by his action and gave Luffy a grateful nod understanding why he was doing it. Nami and Zoro also understood his reasons and Zoro smirked liking his captain while Nami was again surprised by his unpirate-like behaviour.
Ripper then turned to Coby. "And you," he said causing Coby to stiffen up, "You want to join the Marines?"
"Yessir! Please let me join! I know I shot at a Marine Captain, bu-"
"It's okay, kid. Relax," Ripper said seeing that Coby was afraid of not being let in, "All of us pointed our guns at our superiors today. And also colluded with pirates in a way," he said pointing at Luffy. "We're all not getting dinner for a month as punishment. And we still don't know what our higher-ups might decide when they hear that we rebelled, so we might all even get fired… Do you still want to join?"
"Yessir!" Coby nodded resolutely with no hesitation.
"Alright then. You're accepted"
"Thank you, sir!"
Luffy smiled as he turned to Zoro and Nami. "I'll meet you guys at the boat"
"You're going, Big brother Luffy?" Rika hugged him with sad eyes.
"Yeah. Take care of your mom, okay?" he said ruffling her hair and she nodded. "And remember, when someone is starving themselves for no reason-"
"Shove food into their mouths!" Rika cheered even before he finished his question causing him to laugh and Nami to smack him saying "Don't corrupt kids!"
"And maybe next time, cook something for total softies like Zoro-"
"Oi!"
"-They'll be more inclined to eat that way"
"Cook something? Like what?"
"Onigiri?" he suggested and she nodded with a bright smile.
"I wanted to make them too!"
"Shishi good!"
She went on to say her goodbyes to Nami and Zoro, and he slipped out. He then went to the Marine base and quickly found the communications room. It was pretty much deserted with just one Marine who was operating the snails and even he seemed to have just connected the call and had given Makino some privacy.
"Makino?" Luffy said as he peeked into the room.
"Luffy? Come on in"
"You talking to gramps?" he said as he walked in. He also wanted to talk to him and let him know he was okay at least.
"I tried to, but he wasn't available. So I'm talking to Sengoku now"
Luffy did a double-take wondering if he heard right. "Did you just say Sengoku?"
"Yes" Makino chuckled.
"Nice to know you're safe," Sengoku's voice came over the snail Makino was holding and Luffy walked up to her with a questioning look.
"Well, I kept calling Garp a lot over the last two years," Makino began explaining, "But he wasn't there most of the time, so I had to keep leaving a message. I blew up at him one day and after that, he gave me Sengoku's number so that I can talk to him instead"
"That damn Garp sure likes to deflect such problems onto others…" Sengoku said before realizing what he had just said and hastily clarified himself, "Ah not that I think you're a problem, Makino"
"Hehe, that's okay. I know I was harsh sometimes"
Luffy stared at Makino in bewilderment, understanding that she had done way more than he had thought to search for him. He went up behind where she was sitting and put his arms around her hugging her, "You scolded Sengoku himself for not being able to find me huh?"
"Scold is a loose term for what she screa-I mean said to me"
"I did what I had to do," Makino smiled ruffling his hair.
"Thanks, Makino" he gave her a tight squeeze before letting go and sat next to her excited to talk to Sengoku, "I never imagined I would get a chance to talk to you so soon. How ya doing, Sen?"
"…No respect huh? You're your grandpa's grandson alright"
"You can say that again," an old woman's voice came over the snail and Luffy took a moment to realize who that was.
"Is that Tsuru?"
"You recognized me just by the voice? How? I haven't met you before, have I?" Tsuru asked in a puzzled tone.
"Old woman with Sengoku. Only you fit the bill"
"I see"
"Yeah anyway, where did you disappear to for the last two years?" Sengoku asked, "We searched a lot but had no clue where you even were"
Luffy looked at Makino and she shook her head. "Just away with a friend and took some time to come back, that's all"
Sengoku sighed knowing it wasn't the truth but he didn't pry and was just glad that he didn't have to listen to Makino's complaints anymore. "Well okay then. Garp should be back here in a week and he kinda has vacation rights now. So, he'll be choosing to go to East Blue, so I'll just have him look into this Morgan issue too"
"You're gonna have Morgan thrown in Impel Down?" Luffy asked.
"Yeah, most probably"
"I see" Luffy said with a tired sigh.
"What? You don't approve?" Tsuru asked.
"I understand that it holds the vilest criminals who need to be locked up so that they won't hurt others… but no one deserves to be locked up in that hellhole…"
Makino gasped, her breathing getting hitched. Her lips quivered, afraid to ask the question that was on her and also Sengoku and Tsuru's minds.
Knowing what they were thinking, Luffy quickly interjected, "No no, I wasn't there, don't worry. Just heard about what goes on in there from someone"
Makino's racing heart calmed down and she began breathing again. Sengoku and Tsuru also let out a sigh of relief. If Luffy was indeed locked up in Impel Down unjustly, and Garp found out about it, they were afraid of what he would do.
"Well, we'll worry about that. Don't break your head over it"
"Yeah sure," Luffy let it go before grinning, "So you're not gonna arrest me or something? You guys do know I'm a pirate right?"
"Yeah, Garp has been complaining for years that you keep saying that you wanted to become a pirate. You actually became one huh?"
"Yep! I'm gonna become the Pirate King!"
"God, I thought Garp was joking when he used to say that," Tsuru added, "But you actually want to? Imagine if this gets out. Grandson of the Hero of the Marines is aiming to become the Pirate King… Big News Morgan would have a field day with such info"
"Gramps and I have different things we want from life, that's all"
Sengoku gave a sigh before continuing, "Anyway, I'm gonna overlook this since Garp has ensured me that you have moral values and won't do anything to harm people. But I'm warning you - don't get out of line. Just stay quietly in some part of the East Blue without making a ruckus or attracting attention and we'll never have a problem"
Makino facepalmed knowing that Sengoku had just pushed all of Luffy's trigger buttons and she expected Luffy to yell back. But Luffy just calmly smiled before opening his mouth and said something that threw everyone off, "Do you like your desk, Sen?"
"…My…desk?"
"Yeah, the one you sit at and go through reports. Do you like it?"
"…I guess? It's a nice desk…what does this have to do with anything?"
"Okay, good. Doesn't seem like you have any emotional connection to it. One more question - Do you have a desk guy?"
"…a what?"
"A desk guy. You know, someone you go to who makes your desks in case it breaks or something"
"…what are you getting at, brat?"
"I'm saying," Luffy grinned, "that I'm gonna be causing you so many problems, so many issues that you'll start getting report after report after report of the stuff I've done coming to your desk… and I don't think your desk can endure you angrily slamming your fist or even bashing your head on it when you read what I did… it'll break and it'll keep happening again and again… So, I suggest you get a desk guy"
There was stunned silence where the three listeners took a moment to process what Luffy was saying and Makino was looking at him with disbelieving eyes.
"…hey kid, I get that you might be a bit ballsy thinking that your grandfather will protect you. But if you step out of line, even Garp won't be able to give you any sort of protection" Sengoku said losing the amicable tone he was using earlier.
"Yeah I know," Luffy said with a small sad smile, "You don't have to worry about gramps threatening you or something. Even if I'm being executed for being a pirate, I know gramps will choose his duty over family. He's a hero after all and I respect him for it… He might get angry or even leave the Marines, but he won't interfere in my execution. I have chosen this path of becoming a pirate despite knowing he and I will become enemies at one point"
"…and yet you threaten me?"
"God no," Luffy sighed, "I wasn't threatening you. Just stating a fact. With the amount of corruption you guys have in your organization, I'm gonna be butting heads with a lot of Marines soon and you'll hear all about it"
"Listen kid, Makino told me some of the things Morgan did, so I understand that you might have a bad impression of the Marines. But he's an outlier and there aren't many lik-"
"Sengoku, that might have been the funniest thing I've heard today and considering how much I teased Nami, that's saying something… Morgan is an outlier? Are you fucking kidding me?" he lost all cheeriness in his voice as he continued, "He's just like you and everyone else in your stupid organization. Status is everything. Status and Rank decide what's Justice. The one with the highest status is always right… That's the kind of delusional bullshit Morgan was spouting… But is that really delusional though? Doesn't what he said sound familiar to you?"
He gave a pause and when they didn't answer, continued, "Mouths shut huh? Why? Because you've done the exact same things as him, only much much worse? Poor Morgan probably respects a lot of his higher-ups given how much he advocates status, so when he sees his higher-ups, sees people as powerful as you bow down and follow every command a Celestial bastard gives like a dog, be it hunting down little girls, randomly picking someone off a street to make them a slave, randomly killing people even if it's a child for absolutely no reason… Can you really blame the guy for thinking that the world works that way? He's actually a good guy if we see him through that lens as he at least didn't brand people or use them as toys, saddles, or entertainment"
There was a long stretch of silence as neither Sengoku nor Tsuru spoke, and Makino was just staring at Luffy with sad teary eyes. Luffy saw Makino's face and sighed calming down. He gave her a reassuring smile before continuing. "Sorry, that came out too harsh… I know you're not responsible for all of that…"
"You don't understand anything, kid" Sengoku finally spoke, his voice steely as if rehearsed, "How this world works and how delicate the balance between everything is…"
"But I kinda do, Sen. Since you're like the leader, some of my anger might be concentrated on you, but I honestly think that you're not that bad of a guy. The world is shitty and with evil pirates, Warlords, the Celestial bastards, the Gorosei bastards, corrupt Marines in your own ranks, Marines like Akainu who'll kill a whole island of innocent people if it means a single criminal might be on it… I'm sure there are more… God, I don't know how you do it, Sen. I honestly pity you. Balancing that many people, keeping them all satisfied or in line so that the world doesn't become more of a hellhole than it already is… I'm sure you have done plenty of downright evil things in the name of Justice or to keep balance in the world, but I do understand. Choosing the lesser of two evils must be a frequent thing for you huh?"
"…"
"…Garp always gave the impression that you're, to be blunt, quite a stupid kid," Tsuru sighed, "But you're more informed and smarter than you sound… Looks like we've got quite a wild card here"
"I agree with you…" Sengoku said in a calm tone before giving a deep sigh. "What is your goal here kid? What are you doing by saying all this to me?"
"Just a whim to be honest. I thought that you and I were gonna meet a bit later down the line when my goals would have been more well-defined, but I suddenly got this chance to talk to you out of nowhere. So I am just talking to you"
"Your goals? Isn't it to become the Pirate King?"
"Well yeah, that's my main goal… But something happened to me a couple of years ago and now, if I go through my journey with my only goal being becoming the Pirate King, I'll blow my brains out because of boredom. So, I've added a few side goals which I want to do along the way…like annoy the Marines, take down the Celestial bastards, eat a lot of raw ham melon, and I just added a new one - annoy Sengoku a lot…"
"Lord… Am I hearing this right?" Tsuru said with disbelief laced in his voice, "He's saying that he wants to take on the Gods of this world, the people even we can't defy…on a whim and as a 'side goal' because he's bored. And he's saying that to the Fleet Admiral… I thought Garp was crazy but this kid is insane on a whole other level"
"Yeah, I'm already getting a headache just from this," Sengoku sighed.
"It's really nothing personal guys. I even think we could be friends much later in life, but in the short run, you're gonna resent me. That's all I had to say…"
"And what makes you think we won't send someone right now to take care of you?"
"Shishishi now we're talking! I welcome you to try, Sen. The opponents in East Blue are all so boring so please send someone strong so that they won't be a disappointment"
"Unbelievable," Sengoku gave another deep sigh. "You do realize that you insulted the Celestial Dragons, told us that you'll take them down… That's more than enough reason for us to have you killed"
"Celestial bastards. I want to kill them all" Tsuru suddenly interjected.
"Tsuru!"
"Oh come now, Sen. You and I both would jump at the chance to take them down ourselves if we had the chance…"
"Shishishishi nice, Tsuru!"
Sengoku let out another deep sigh seemingly having had enough of this. "We'll talk about this later, Tsuru…And kid, as much as I'd like to send someone after you, you haven't actually done anything yet, other than talk big. If I send someone to kill you now for absolutely no reason, Garp will destroy Marine HQ…"
"Awww…" Luffy pouted.
"But I'm watching you, kid. You step too out of line, and I will do something about it… and as you said, if it's justified, even Garp won't interfere"
"Okay then, I'm looking forward to it. I'm glad we could keep this civil for now at least. Bye, Sen. Bye, Tsuru. Say hi to gramps! And oh, don't forget to get a desk guy!"
"Annoying brat"
KA-CHAK
Luffy chuckled as he disconnected the call, happy to have taunted Sengoku, and looked at Makino who was just gaping at him. "What?"
"It's just…just…" Makino muttered looking like she was unsure of what she wanted to say. She then took a deep breath and composed herself "Let's have a serious talk later, okay?"
"Sure," Luffy nodded and the two got up to leave.
"Hey Makino, do you know how to make holy water?"
"Holy water?" she asked confused.
"You boil the hell out of it"
"Pfft~"
Her mood lifted, Luffy cheered "Alright, let's go!"
—
"THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING, LUFFY!" Coby yelled as he saluted from the shore of Shellstown, "I'LL NEVER FORGET WHAT ALL YOU DID FOR ME!"
"BYE COBY! SEE YOU ON THE GRAND LINE!" Luffy waved with both arms as they sailed away.
"ATTENTION!" The other Marines also lined up behind Coby saluting them and many of the townspeople also came to say goodbye.
"BYE GUYS! STAY SAFE!" Luffy waved goodbye while sitting on the bow of their boat.
"Never thought I would see Marines saluting pirates," Zoro commented.
"Yeah, I would never believe it if I wasn't seeing it with my own eyes," Nami added.
"It's pretty much been like this at every island we've been at," Makino added, "Without the Marines of course, but you get the gist"
"I see" Zoro and Nami both nodded understanding that Luffy's idea of a pirate was very different and they both looked forward to see what kind of adventures their captain would pull them into.
Meanwhile, after waving goodbye to Coby and the others, Luffy picked up the newspaper he had bought just before he left. There was one particular story which had caught his attention and he read it intently.
'Hmmm could all of them be real?' he wondered with a glint in his eyes as his lips slowly curled up into a smile. 'Well, I did leave early for this reason. Let's go and check'
A/N: Thanks for reading! Hope you liked it!
Apologies for the delay. This chapter went through multiple rewrites where I ended up with six different versions of how Luffy meets Nami and Zoro. Like Luffy meeting Zoro at Inizio too, him meeting Nami under totally different circumstances, and so on… At the end, I wanted to write one original meeting and one canon meeting, and this was the result. It's like Luffy slowly transitioning into canon events. Hope it turned out good.
Stay safe and happy y'all. See you next time.
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Luffy: Sen I will be the reason you need hearth medication in a few years this is not a threat it is a guarantee.
Good God this chapter is amazing and Garp reacting to knowing his grandson was celestial dragoned will be glorious. Also Tsuru just hanging out there going yuuupp he is definitely Garps grandson is a vibe.
Good God this chapter is amazing and Garp reacting to knowing his grandson was celestial dragoned will be glorious. Also Tsuru just hanging out there going yuuupp he is definitely Garps grandson is a vibe.
Fellow Human
Verified Roado Rolla
Looks like you got autocorrected 5x when it should be "bo staff".
Thanks for the chap and looking forward to hints of good filler eps you've given.
Oh and don't remember where did Enel's fruit go after Luffy killed him? Nami could use it, lol the weakest going to 2nd strongest.
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- Location
- Definitely Earth
Lol nope. That's how I thought it was spelt. I'll edit it.