Ch 1 | sold
He doesn't let them take away his hat.
He bites at the fingers who reach over him, growling at them, holding tightly to his precious possession and unwilling to let go even when he hears the telltale whistle of a slender rope coming down behind him. His grip on the straw hat only tightens as the sharp pain whips across his unprotected back. He howls and cries and screams for Ace - somebody, anybody - to help him.
No one comes - Ace left weeks ago, in search of adventure on the infinite sea - and every lash is fire on his pale skin, but Luffy doesn't let go of the hat to protect himself. He won't.
The guard gets bored and leaves him alone. Even as tears and snot run down his face, Luffy takes it as an accomplishment. These last few days have been nothing but hell. Sweat drips from his temple down to the seastone-embedded collar on his neck. For what seems like the hundredth time, he wonders why he is here. Why can't he go the place he can finally call home, back to Dadan and the bandits? What do these people want with him?
He is stripped bare and naked in the musty air of the shop, his physical body analyzed and inspected by people with strange glass bubbles over their heads. Those who didn't have the orbs are dressed like the people he remembers Sabo describing as nobles - frilly, silky cloths wrapped around their bodies and an air of arrogance following their very steps. Luffy hates them.
They look down at him, faces twisted in a mix of disgust and amusement. They ask him to twirl, run, jump, roll on the ground. He puts all his hatred into his glares as an answer to their undignified demands - he wasn't a dog - in hopes that maybe he can shoot them all down with imaginary lasers. When they don't explode into hot black ash, he curses himself for the fear that outweighs his anger, which he assumes is what causes them to scoff at his silent attempts at rebelling.
A woman doesn't look amused at his act of defiance. She tisks, then whispers to the guard who had kneeled when the group approached. The whip suddenly descends upon his feet and Luffy jumps to avoid it. The guard is relentless, forcing Luffy to dodge the attacks as best he can, aware of the appraising eyes. Now they're satisfied.
"I want it," a gruff voice says.
"As do I," says a woman.
"It is… somewhat entertaining," another muses.
"Noted," a blue-suited man with a curly mustache says, bowing in front of them.
Luffy remembers how the man had been there to receive him after he had been jumped by two of his goons, gagged, and given a weird shot that made his body go limp. Now the man hovers around the "customers" as they pass through each of his captured "specimen," deciding on their fate. Luffy concludes that he must be the owner of this strange store.
"It will be among the auctioned tomorrow," the man continues, face still towards the ground. "As a devil fruit user, it will be at a high price."
"Do you think that poses a problem?" the woman asks, the tone in her voice warning the man not to overstep his boundaries.
"N-no, of course not," the man stutters, beads of sweat forming on his head. "I was simply- uh, m-my apologies, madam."
"We shall be there tomorrow then."
They move onto another display, and Luffy is shoved back into the cage. It locks with a final click. He puts on his ripped, blood-stained clothes, hissing as the cloth brushes against his torn back, and hears the royals complaining of the heat. Some of them make their way to the door.
As they exit, a gust of the cool night air drifts in and Luffy crawls weakly to the bars to feel the breeze ruffle his hat and dry his tear-streaked face. He spies a bit of the moon and the majestic shape of the mountains' silhouette against it.
"DADAN! MAKINO!" he cries as loud as he can, his voice cracking.
He futilely hopes against all hope that someone can hear him, that the wind can carry his voice to the mountains where Dadan and all the other bandits are surely looking for him. He imagines how worried Makino must be, too. Despite the villagers' fear of the deceptively dangerous bandits, the kind woman would come to visit him and Ace, bringing them new clothes and some of her delicious bread.
The thought of them never knowing what had happened to him made the rubber boy grit his teeth, a large lump forming in his throat. He had never gotten the chance to thank them.
I'M HERE!
The door of the human shop closes with a boom.
"Shut it, twerp," a deep voice grunts out. The whip cracks against his cage, across his curled fingers, and Luffy stumbles back.
After a while, he crawls again to the bars, narrowing his eyes. By the door is a floor-to-ceiling window, where Luffy is surprised to see a man sitting in front of it, his green hair and purple suit illuminated by a flickering street lamp. The young man is gesturing wildly, seemingly talking to one of the captured women, out of her cage and chained to the stonewall to serve as an advertisement for the store. Luffy can't see her face, only her long apricot hair.
Although she's in the same situation he's in, he sort of envies her position by the window, where she can see the outside, where she can imagine tasting freedom. The young man opposite of the window barrier seems happy talking to her, even while she could not talk back.
Luffy sits back in his dark, lonely cage. He curls up in a corner, wincing at the pain in his back and clenching his hat. He misses Ace. He misses Sabo.
He doesn't know what's going on, only that he doesn't want to be here. Here, where he's fed raw bloody meat like an animal but treated like a nobody. Here, trapped in a cage and fearing the next day of torture. Here, where he is surrounded by prisoners like him, but completely and utterly alone.
Luffy tugs on his hat so that it covers his face, crying himself into a troubled sleep.
"Oi, runt! Wake up!"
Luffy shoots up, his small hands immediately flying up to his head and breathes a sigh after feeling the familiar texture of rough straw. He looks up to find the man with a whip scowling down at him. The cage is open.
He tentatively gets out of his small prison. Metal handcuffs, also embedded with seastone, suddenly clamp down on his thin wrists, then on his ankles, squeezing them tightly. A longer chain connects his cuffs with the other prisoners and their shackles. Including him, there are nine.
Luffy is next to the woman he saw last night, the one with long orange hair. This time he sees her face, and is startled by how blue her eyes are. She looks down at him and he watches as her chapped, bruised lips curve slightly up. He frowns, confused at why she is smiling in these grim circumstances.
"Stay strong, young one," she says quietly, almost mysterious. "You have a spirit they can't break."
Before Luffy can respond, they are led out into the open and he squints at the sudden bright light in the narrow alley. They walk for what seems like hours and Luffy's bare feet start to burn on the hot dirt path.
They finally reach the center of town, where the paved streets are bustling with people. No one seems to care that there are prisoners, young and old alike, handcuffed and walking amongst them. They notice, yes, but all the royals do is form a wide berth around them, going about their day as if they're used to seeing a scene like so every day. They probably are.
Luffy's not sure how, but he knows that, were he to scream for help, the nobles would do nothing to aid him or the prisoners around him. That, or his personal guard would shoot him right then and there. He had been assigned one after beating up the other men and trying to escape. Luffy doesn't see why he needs the large man watching his every move, though. He's painfully vulnerable with the tight collar around his neck, the sea-stone serving as a kryptonite to his rubber devil powers.
The line clanks through an alley and into the backdoor of a building. The smell of rotten eggs and feces viciously assaults Luffy's nose and he breathes through his mouth as they all suddenly stop behind a black wall.
They are instructed by the man with the curly mustache to go around the wall and up a set of stairs when their numbers are called. Luffy is given a number he can't remember, then the chain that binds him and the prisoners together is unshackled. The cuffs, however, stay on.
Squished in between the woman and an old, decrepit old man, Luffy can hear clapping from behind the wall, big numbers being called, and different voices shouting. One by one, the prisoners go around the wall. They don't come back.
He doesn't realize his number is called until the woman with the blue eyes nudges him. He looks at her, her soft smile, then goes around the wall to face a flight of stairs.
He can stay strong.
He climbs up the stairs and onto a lit stage, a crowd of people dressed like the ones from yesterday all facing him with demeaning stares. The blue-suited man is on a podium, speaking to the crowd, and Luffy looks at the white light that glints off some of the fish bowls around their heads. What were those for?
He then hears the owner of the shop describe him as human. Fourteen years old. Orphan. Devil fruit user. "The bidding starts at 800,000 beli!"
Bidding? Luffy stares forward as red wooden paddles with numbers raise up from the sea of nobles.
"1,000,000 beli!"
"1,500,000 beli!"
As the numbers spoken get even higher, Luffy continues to stare blankly at the crowd. He shifts under the bright spotlight, entertaining the thought of beating them all up and escaping, then burying the idea after reminding himself that he needs to live through this - whatever this is. He still needs to accomplish his dream, after all. But as the amount of money climbs, his mind goes back to how hard Sabo and Ace had to work in order to get enough money for their own dreams of owning a ship, to sail away from the island. What they earned after years of stealing and scavenging didn't even compare to what these people were spitting out like it was nothing to them.
"5,000,000 beli!"
"8,000,000 beli!"
"10,000,000 beli!"
"..."
When no one else offers a higher price, the man with the mustache starts to speak again. Luffy looks for who said the last number. He zeroes in on a swirly-haired guy wearing a glass bowl around his head, thick lips in a wide, malicious smirk. Snot drips down one nostril as he yips in glee, having had no other competitor for the straw hat boy. A cold shiver runs down Luffy's back.
"Going once," the announcer starts, "going twice… SOLD! Congratulations to Sir Saint Charloss! You are now the owner of this young slave."
The applause is deafening.
End of Chapter 1
So I finally learned how to use the page-breaker/horizontal line. Man, am I dumb XP.
Chapter lengths will vary. This is obviously AU so bear with me - I'm writing this knowing only the information Oda has provided us about the Tenryuubito and slavery. That said, this will be a dark fic, and updates may be sporadic (I'll try to update at least once a week). Other than that...
Thoughts? Comments? Your opinion matters, so review! :)
Ja ne,
forgottensongs