The Beginning

"I'm going to kick your ass." Her voice was firm for all of its brightness. The utterance was the last of a long tongue-lashing. Its words hung in the air, articles of undeniable truth that came from a source of juxtaposition.

The aforementioned source was a pale young woman in a straw hat, covered by a simple set of summer garments that hung baggily off her person and did her no favors from an aesthetic standpoint. Her hair was unkept, dark, and unimpressive.

She was so, so very small, and the collective gasp greeting her announcement was therefore unsurprising.

"Are… are you insane?" came her equally unassuming companion's reply, his eyes widening during a single drawn-out moment. He was short, ruddy, and wearing glasses that had seen better days. His clothes were dirty, stained, and thread-bare. His hair had grown out of the style it had been accustomed to and become a stringy purple mane. For once, his voice wasn't trembling. It was hard to tremble when incredulity came to call.

The young woman's answer couldn't be immediate. Life isn't a turn-based eventuality. It happens simultaneously. Thus, an action had to be the reply.

A spiked club of enormous size and mass came down in what would have been a vicious demonstration of physical might, had it not been for the target's lack of cooperation.

This target was not a standard bag of flesh, bones, and meat. It didn't shatter, spurt, or expire. No.. it (or, rather 'she') merely smiled as the weapon made contact and hid her facial features, only damaging the precious object on her head.

Coby, for indeed this was her new friend's name, found he was screaming until the adrenaline left him a shivering clump on his knees. Relief didn't bring him back up to his feet, but it flooded in like a welcome tide on a sweltering day. He had been afraid to lose someone so driven, no matter how recent their acquaintance.

He should have known better than to be afraid. She had already demonstrated her powers to him earlier, and those abilities a devil fruit bestowed were never to be taken lightly.

Coby's reaction was not shared with the enemy herself, though to paint their opponent's many followers with the same emotional response would be irresponsible.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU?!" screamed the dime-novel villain known as Alvida, her voice heavy with use, spite, and frustration. Her shock was coupled with the fury of one deprived of a kill. Her pride had so recently been wounded, her self-imposed bubble forced by the insults of a mere girl that should have been little more than a twig crushed underfoot. Indeed, the differences in stature and the appearance of physical strength between the two would have guaranteed it in a normal world. This was not that place, however, and Alvida's sheer girth, strength, and physical maturity meant nothing against the workings of fate.

This universe stood along many other universes. In many, a boy stood in her place and announced the truth as well as he knew it. In others, she stood and replied the same standard answer. However, here and now, this creature had different thoughts and reactions. A small increase in intelligence could do a great deal for someone's idioms. A large boost, on the other hand, would change everything. However, self-awareness on an enormous scale, coupled with brief visions of other worlds and outcomes…. That changed everything, and even the young woman herself couldn't understand why. She only blessed her luck that she had the wisdom to withstand the barrage of the multiplicity she experienced when she accessed what had to be a long-dead and hopefully forbidden art.

She saw every self stand in her place and reply. She saw them attack. She saw a brief glimpse of both the future and the past. She felt a hundred different bodies within her.

She closed her eyes serenely. As always, she had both initiated and withstood the sensation in less than a second.

"I am Monkey D. Luffy… an avatar of destruction." she said, far more wistful than she should have been, having felt the satisfying crunch of this caricature of selfishness only moments before.

There was no need to announce her attack. Perhaps other times, she would need the rush that action brought, but she had just said it through a legion of mouths.

Her arms stretched, and the added thrust and momentum brought incredible force to the beat-down to be administered.

She laughed. Oh, goodness, how she laughed… It was dangerous to cheat like this, she knew. It was taxing, in the long-run. She could only access this ability a few times in a lunar cycle, and it was incredibly toxic to her sanity. Her life was her own, and she didn't have to steal experiences from her compatriots to enjoy them or even anticipate basic turns of events, but the security that this knowledge brought was so comforting. Perhaps it was even addicting to feel the satisfaction of herself magnified fifty-fold… but the blows had to come, regardless. Was indulgence here an act of narcissism? Definitely.

This hadn't been an attack initiated entirely for her own gratification, however. This was a battle on a ship that had been attacking an innocent civilian vessel. They had presumably murdered people. They had a kidnapped child they kept as a hostage and slave implicated in their crimes. He had been psychologically stunted by their actions and she had come as a savior… but only after requiring her little companion to assert himself. She had asked him to insult his tormentor when she had him at her mercy.

Coby had to have thought he was going to die only moments prior to this, standing before his captor without the power to harm or stop her. The announcement of Luffy's violent intentions had merely been a reaction to the entirety of his unfortunate circumstances. Now, due to both of their actions, he would be free. He would know the liberty of a man who had been imprisoned under false pretenses and then released. Greeted correctly, his future could lead to the revival of a dream he had thought dead. He could become a marine. If Luffy could entertain thoughts of being the Pirate King, gender roles be damned, it wasn't that strange for him to desire the role of a protector of laws and the was a pity, then, that he was about to learn what a hopeless person the heroine of this tale could be. There are no perfect saviors.

They had destroyed Alvida's reputation, pummeled those who needed pummeling, and set out on a raft with only a few provisions. There had been a moment of brief intensity as Luffy locked eyes with another maiden in another raft as the two made their way onto the drink, but Coby didn't ask what brought it on and he, at least, forgot about it quickly.

Luffy did not. She had memorized every curve of that person's face and matched it to something she had brought upon herself in a vision years ago. Something important, to say the least, but there was nothing to be done for it now.

"Where are we going?" Coby asked, his youth showing in his need for an authority to direct him, and who better to ask than aspiring pirate royalty? Surely someone such as Luffy could-

Luffy interrupted any train of thought he may have had by laughing uproariously, throwing her hands up in a gesture that clearly translated to 'I don't know and have made no plans as a result'.

"What?!" Coby could feel his energy draining, but Luffy looked at him with warm eyes and a kind of trust that put him more at ease than was, perhaps, wise. Still, he had to know why she had come so unprepared for anything resembling an outline for her plans…

"Why on earth wouldn't you have maps or at least an idea of where you're going?!"

"I didn't think it was that important." she said simply, her expression unchanging.

"Do you at least know how to get to the next island? Can you navigate at all?" the boy felt both desperation and exasperation rise in his tone.

"Nope. Had better things to learn." came a laconic reply.

Coby became visibly upset. "WHY?! Why wouldn't you bother to learn it?! I'm a fisherman's boy and barely did any sailing and still learned the basics. Are you trying to die?"

There was more accusation there than he had intended.

"Of course not. If I die, I die," Luffy said for the second time that day. "As long as I've done everything to the best of my ability, there's no shame in that."

She paused, then added, "I'm going to have people for that, Coby."

"Your plan is to run around naked and exposed until you find a navigator, then?" Coby queried, his disdain for this plan obvious.

"No. I'm going to run around almost naked and exposed for the rest of my life. But my wardrobe isn't in question here!" Luffy exclaimed.

Coby got quiet for a moment, thinking Luffy could, perhaps, be that dense. He also spent a little too long thinking about the sort of thing that an adolescent could be forgiven for, eyeing her nearly-exposed breasts. He was surprised when his silence was broken by her voice again.

"That was a joke." she stated curtly, not really concerned with where he was looking. "I 'm not going to stop running around in this number, sure, but I know what you meant."

"Um...,"

"Look, Coby, I know I have to depend on others to survive. I'm depending on you right now, and I'll depend on my navigator when I find them. If you want the best or to even BE the best, you have to make sacrifices."

She looked up at the clouds. "I tried, you know, but reading maps didn't come easily. I checked… other people in my shoes… and most came to the same conclusion. If you can give someone else a job you stink at and they love, why not? I mean, less charting meant more punching!"

"There's one flaw in that logic, Ms. Luffy."

"What's that?"

"I don't love to chart courses or anything. You kinda didn't bother asking."

"Meh." she shrugged, pretending her fingers were monsters chasing birds across the sky. They opened and closed like maws.

"You aren't listening anymore, are you?"

"Meh."

While hitting a girl was supposed to be a taboo, it was very satisfying to smack Luffy's head with a closed fist. It didn't hurt her, anyway. She responded in kind anyway, though.

He didn't have her imperviousness, and though she clearly pulled her punch, it still hurt.

"What'd you do that for?!" he whined.

"Felt like it," Luffy said, yawning.

"Hmph." Coby huffed, then gave a condescending look to the reclining girl. It was difficult to guess her age, but he'd posit it in the late teens. "Well, at least I managed to grab a map. We aren't too far away from an island. We can get there long before we run out of-"

He was interrupted by the sound of loud chewing. "-food and water and WILL YOU STOP EATING?!"

Luffy paused, her mouth still open wide with an entire apple dangling above her gaping maw.

"Look, we have to make food last out here." Coby chided.

She nodded, but still jammed the whole fruit into her mouth and chewed it without breaking eye contact. It was… rather disturbing. Her jaw had to distend just a tad and he swore she didn't blink even once.

Coby resisted the urge to throw her into ocean, knowing full well what could happen to her if he tried to do so. Not that she'd let him, of course. Still, he took some solace in knowing that their destination was so close by. Maybe, he thought guiltily, there was someone else he could pawn her off on.

Thankfully, there were many such people in the world.

A/N: I live. I live and my chapters are short and I know damned well that Luffy is ooc. That's kinda the point.

I mean, all of us have a bit of postmodernism in us here, and we appropriate things as we see fit.

Before any of you explode, I need you to know that TBOO has a little problem.

I forgot most of the plot of Naruto and can't really read subs with any ease anymore.