[1. Hawkling]
Pirate Hunter Zoro did not know what to make of this self-proclaimed pirate.
"…Wait, so you took out an entire marine base because they interrupted your meal?"
"Yep," Luffy said with a cheerful grin, even as he stuffed his face with more food than physically possible and Zoro shook his head.
"That's… crazy."
"Hey, the meat was really good. The idiot son shouldn't have knocked it on the floor like that." He was pouting through stuffed cheeks, a bizarre image.
Hard to believe that a mere few hours ago he'd taken on half the marine force in Shell town, sliced up the ugly statue on the base to pieces, and deflected every bullet fired at him with only a sword (west blue styled, Zoro hazily noted at the time), and in such a waythat it seemed the bullets had never been aimed at him at all.
Zoro had never seen such… subtle blade work before, and it wasn't every day that a swordsman came along with the power to cut through stone.
"Hey, Zoro!"
"What?"
"Join my crew!"
"…Why the hell would I do that?"
"You finished off that captain guy, and you seem pretty strong. So… join my crew!"
"No," he said shortly, and Luffy looked taken aback.
"Oh. Why not?"
"Because I have my own goals. Being a pirate isn't one of them."
"Aw, c'mon! I want to be pirate king, what's your dream?"
Zoro rested a hand on his swords, his eyes hard as he said, "I'm going to be the world's greatest swordsman. And I'm not throwing it away to be a pirate of all things. Surely you can understand that, being a swordsman yourself."
Luffy's mouth rounded in a surprised 'o.'
"Ohhh… So you want to beat the current greatest, right?"
"Yes," Zoro said with a glare, daring him to say otherwise. Luffy's grin, bright enough as it was, grew even more.
"You really think you can beat my dad?"
"I know I ca— wait, what?"
Swallowing the remaining food in his mouth, Luffy threw back his head and laughed merrily, pounding the table as Zoro tried to work his way around what this pirate had just said. That, and he had a horrible sinking feeling in his stomach as Luffy quieted, fixing him with his piercing yellow eyes and a feral grin that was suddenly very different than the one he'd sported previously.
"Did I ever tell you my full name?" he smirked, "My name's Dracule D. Luffy. I'm going to be King of the Pirates, so I don't really care about being the greatest swordsman… but if you want the chance to beat old man Hawkeye, you should definitely join my crew!"
There was really nothing else that needed to be said.
[2. Smoke on the Water]
"Hold up!"
Sanji's call brought the small group to a halt. The shouts of the marines behind them had faded into the pouring rain; for now, they'd lost them, and the breather was a welcome one.
"…Wait, where'd Zoro and Nami go?" Usopp asked quizzically, noticing that they'd mysteriously lost two of their members in the chase.
"Don't worry, they'll turn up!" Luffy grinned, and Usopp groaned. Meanwhile, there was a thump as the fourth member of the group fell to his knees, sickly pale and shaking as he struggled for air. The chase evidently hadn't done much for him, though to be fair, the seastone cuffs around his wrists weren't helping.
"Oi, Luffy," Sanji said, "The marine's gonna be dead weight if we don't get those cuffs off." The marine in question glared.
"Then leave me behind," he growled, "Why the hell are you people doing this? If you wanted ransom, maybe you didn't notice the execution you kidnapped me from."
"What? No, I kidnapped you so you can join my crew," Luffy said bluntly, and there were heavy face palms to go with the marine's startled expression.
"Don't talk about kidnap so casually, moron," said Sanji, flicking his sodden cigarette at him.
"I was kinda curious about that whole execution thing, actually," Usopp piped up, "What's the deal? All the posters said sedition, but the townspeople…"
"None. Of. It. Is. True!" For a moment the seastone seemed to have no effect as the marine snarled, rage kindling in his eyes like a flame to dry tinder… until it died away, and his shoulders dropped. "You want the truth?" he muttered, "I didn't fit in their cookie-cutter brand of Justice. That's all you need to hear." The bitterness as he spoke couldn't be missed, and for a moment he looked like he had in the face of his own execution— like a man who had been utterly broken.
There would have been a long and awkward silence if Luffy hadn't stared at him with an uncharacteristically serious expression, one that abruptly cleared as he decided... to pick at his nose.
"Yeah, well, I don't care about any of that," he said plainly, and the marine recoiled, bristling in indignation despite himself.
"What— what do you mean you don't care?" he spluttered, "You just— I'm not— why—"
"Don't think about it too hard," said Usopp, more than a little sympathetically, "Once Luffy sets his mind on something…"
"Yeah! You're going to join my crew, and that's that."
"I'M NOT JOINING YOUR RUDDY—"
"So you'd rather just give up and die, then?"
The marine stuttered to a halt. Luffy was uncannily quiet again; even with wind and rain lashing at his clothes, his hair, he stood more or less at ease in the face of the storm, in the face of their pursuers, with a wide grin stretched across his face... and a spark of something in his eyes, forcing the abductee into silence.
"I…"
"OI! LUFFY!" the shout cut off anything else he might have said, as around the corner came Pirate Hunter Zoro, with an irate Nami thrown over his shoulder.
"Put me down, already!" she seethed, but her words feel on deaf ears.
"There's a bunch of marines just around the corner," Zoro said, panting from exertion, "Time to get moving."
"Moving where? I don't even know where we are now!"
"Let's just beat them up!"
"NO!" Nami snapped her head around with a glare. "We don't have time for that! If they cut us off before the docks, we're dead, you hear? DEAD!"
"What? What do we do?"
"Tch, who cares, just start running!"
….is what they would have done, but it was too late. The sound of pounding boots filled the air as marines poured into the street, rapidly cutting off any way of escape. There was a short silence as the groups stared each other down; Nami and Usopp shrunk back, while Luffy cracked his knuckles in anticipation. Sanji and Zoro tensed further when a single marine stepped forward; a woman, in a dark colored Marine's jacket and a floral shirt, a pair of glasses on her nose.
"Straw Hat Luffy!" she shouted, brandishing a katana in hand, "You are hereby accused of aiding and abetting in the escape of a traitor and known enemy of the Marines and the World Government!" Said so-called traitor flinched, looking away with a stony expression. "I hereby order you to stand down and release the prisoner to us immediately!"
Luffy smiled. "Nope!" he said cheerfully. There was noticeable tensing among all present. The marine's eyes narrowed.
"I'll say it again. Stand down and surrender yourselves, or I will be forced to take action." Her face was hard as she spoke, though the severity melted away in the face of Luffy's easy grin.
"Nope!" he repeated, and the woman's mouth narrowed into a thin line. Her eyes darted away, then back; The knuckles on her sword were white with tension.
"Then you leave me no choice," she said, and raised a free hand into the air. "Men!"
"YES MA'AM!" the enemy shouted at once, as every single marine raised their held weapons in the air, and…
…dropped them. The clash of steel and stone rang in streets. Luffy blinked; the rest of his crew gaped, caught off guard, and even more so when the entire company dropped, a few even throwing themselves bodily to the ground.
"ARGH! S-Sergeant, they're too strong!"
"M-Monsters! There's no way we can win!"
"Such power… I can't move my body!"
"We've lost…! Forgive us, Sergeant!"
Only the woman, the sergeant, was left standing, shoulders straight and head high as she sheathed her sword in one smooth motion. Luffy burst into laughter.
"These guys are funny!" he said; the rest of the Straw Hats abruptly stumbled.
"Idiot! You don't see anything weird about this?" Sanji protested, a vein popping in his forehead. Meanwhile the woman stepped forward. This time, she spoke lowly and quickly, with an edge that betrayed her nerves.
"You need to move quickly," she said, nearly tripping over her words , "There's still a full company out there. I don't know how many have reached your ship, but we've misdirected as many as we can. If you take the way behind us it should—"
"Sergeant." It wasn't a marine who spoke— or rather, not one of the marines writhing on the ground in feigned defeat. This time, it was the marine in Straw Hat custody. His face was turning an alarming shade of red as he finally spoke, but the Sergeant didn't appear to hear, keeping her eyes fixed on Luffy.
"—should take you more or less straight to the docks. The ships that came for the execution might go after you, but—"
"Sergeant Tashigi!"
"—With a head start you can lose them at Reverse Mountain—"
"Tashigi, what the hell are doing?"
"Sir, please!"
The Sergeant's shouted canceled the other out as he stared, bewildered. She drew a shaky breath.
"Here. You'll need this," she said quietly. Reaching into her pocket, she withdrew a small key, and thrust it forward into Luffy's hands. "This is all I can do. Repay me by not getting caught."
"Don't do this. They'll have your head as easily as they had mine," said the marine, urgently, with a hint a panic, and Sergeant Tashigi finally looked over, then, looking him dead in the eye.
"I don't care."
"I'm not worth it. I'm ordering you to—"
"Forgive me, sir, but you aren't my Captain anymore," Tashigi said sharply, "Which is why I'm doing this. Which is why I'm doing this."
Right there in the rain she bowed low, arms stiff at her sides, to Luffy. "Straw Hat Luffy, I ask… no, I beg you… please get Captain Smoker out of here!"
And Luffy nodded.
"Okay, I will," he said, without a hint of reluctance. Then he spun to face the rest of his crew and called, "C'mon, let's go to Merry!" before spinning back and taking off down the street, past the downed marines, and towards the docks. Shaking their heads, still caught off guard by the turn of events, they followed, and with them pulled the former marine Captain Smoker. He resisted, but barely; the color had drained from his face.
Tashigi didn't look back. Instead, she shrank into the distance, and was gone, swallowed up in the night to her uncertain fate.
They didn't run into any more marines the rest of the way; Tashigi had been true to her promise of waylaying as many as she and her supporters could manage. The Merry Go was waiting for them, bobbing in time to the waves, but while the others rushed aboard with a nod to their Captain, Luffy remained with Smoker, finally released to stand on his own.
"You have some good nakama." It was Luffy who spoke again.
"You shut up," Smoker snapped; he was swaying where he stood, his strength still sapped by the seastone cuffs, but he was glaring holes into the ground. "They shouldn't… they didn't have the right. Idiots. Those stupid idiots."
"Hey, you sound a lot better now!"
"What?"
"Before you were sort of lame. But the way I see it, you kind of owe those guys now."
"Like hell I do! They don't have any idea what they're doing, and I had nothing to do with their behavior—"
"Which is why you owe them."
Smoker was glaring at Luffy now, a withering look that would have cowed just about anyone in Luffy's place. Luffy himself, however, stood unaffected.
"You can't die now," he said simply, "Or you'd be wasting everything they did. They're risking everything for this, right?"
Silence.
"Hey, Smoke-guy… I'm going to be King of the Pirates, you know?"
Smoker laughed. A short, humorless sort of laugh, more out of surprise than anything.
"Pirate King?" he said, "You? You really think you can be a pirate king, out of every damn pirate in all the oceans? Are you out of your mind?"
"Nope!" the grin was back, sunny and optimistic, "Because that's my dream, and I'm gonna make it happen. And when I'm Pirate King…" he paused. The grin slipped away, and suddenly Luffy was serious again, staring at Smoker intently as he spoke, "When I'm Pirate King, I'm going to change the Marines."
A beat. Staring at him incredulously, Smoker started to shake, then chuckle, and finally, broke into full out laughter. He laughed so hard he ended gasping for breath, doubled over and wheezing. If there was a hint of hysteria in his laughter, Luffy didn't say a word about it, and waited quietly for him to straighten again, wiping tears from his eyes.
"Kid, you are crazy. You know that?" he gasped, "Change the Marines? A pirate? Why would you do that?"
"Because someone needs to do it."
The last of the laughter died away under Luffy's solemn expression, and Smoker peered at him, falling into a frown as he studied the pirate with a dark look. Then Luffy brightened.
"So how about it?" he said, and held up the small key Tashigi had given him, "Join my crew… and I'll take your cuffs off!"
Smoker looked at the key, then back to Luffy. He took a step back, and gave him a long, long look.
"…the devil. You must be the devil, you know that?" he said at last, "And I hope you go to hell for it, you hear me?"
"So is that a yes?"
Smoker smiled for the first time days.
"…Get these damn things off of me!"
A blow was struck to the pride of the Marines that day, when the ship of Straw Hat Luffy, holding the highest bounty in the East Blue at a whopping 30,000 berries, evaded capture and made a clean getaway from all pursuers… aided by a thick white smoke that obscured all traces of their escape.
Shortly after the rumors began of a new crew member, a white-haired man bearing the symbol of 'Justice' on the back of his jacket… a man rumored to be a former marine gone rogue.
Headquarters attempted to cover this up, of course, but to no avail; any attempt was blown wide open when Straw Hat pirates stormed Ennies Lobby and stood in defiance for all the world to see.
The next day the bounty posters for 'White Chase' Smoker ran fresh off the presses in the hundreds.
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I started this a long time ago; Originally this was going to be a series of little AU drabbles, but then I never finished and I forgot some of them… but I still liked these, so I tried to finish them up. The second one ended up a little longer than I expected, haha.
So here's AU (A) in which Luffy is the son of Dracule Mihawk and obviously got most of his genes from his mother's side, and AU (B) in which the context is that the Marines are a lot more jerkish and corrupt to a point where Smoker, being someone who selectively ignores orders and more or less follows his own code of justice, is a major pain the ass for them. Really I just wanted a situation where he'd join the Straw Hat crew and this is how it came about?\
Idk about characterization I haven't read OP for awhile, but it was a good exercise.
Feel free to expand these if anyone wants to! (And then let me know so I can read it.)