Chapter 1

So you're back. Or this is your first time. If it's your first time, you're reading this in the wrong order, so go back and try again. I mean I guess I could sum it up, but you'd really be missing out on some good jokes and character interaction if you started here.

Alright so a handful of years ago, zombies showed up. They popped up one day and started biting people and turning them into more zombies. So, some of the people survived, and some of those people gathered together in Boston and set up this place called Funkytown, and they elected this woman Bellemere as their leader.

So she runs the place, and one day these guys in hoods all show up like a creepy cult. Turns out there's a lot of weirdos out there anyway, people who used the apocalypse to start dressing up and acting like idiots. Like Mad Max, but with more cosplay. Anyway, this cult has a woman with them named Robin. And she reveals that she's immune to the virus that turns everyone into zombies.

The cult wants to get to Atlanta to take her to the CDC, but they're short on supplies, so they need Bellemere's help. So she gives them some vans and supplies and her daughter Nami volunteers to go down with them.

On the way down, they run into this kid, Luffy, who's been living in New York since Zombie Day. And he's the only guy still living in New York. So they let him tag along, and while they're camping out at a motel, Nami leaves a lit cigarette unattended and burns the whole place down. The cult decides to ditch the unintentional pyromaniac, but Robin still wants to get down to the CDC so they keep going.

Unfortunately the CDC's gone, it's been blown up. And then Robin runs into her ex-husband, Crocodile, who runs an apartment building like he's some kinda sleazy king. While they're staying there, they meet up with this cute little married couple, Coby and Vivi, and the five of them end up bailing on Crocodile's little paradise after Luffy knocks him out.

On the way home, they run afoul of Empress Hancock, who is one of those weirdo Drama Kids I mentioned earlier. Vivi ends up negotiating with her and Hancock's army escorts them back home. Hancock and Bellemere get to work trying to negotiate some kinda deal with each other so both their people can mutually benefit, and Nami and Luffy decide to try making out on a long-term basis.

So that's half of it so far. Anyway, a year later, Bellemere and Hancock have worked out this arrangement where they set up a little outpost called Little Garden halfway between their colonies, so shipping supplies back and forth is a bit easier. And to keep things fair, they're sending six people each to maintain the place. So our original five and new boy Sanji are going from Bellemere's place, and Hancock's sending her own people.

Hancock's people are, y'know, weird. But total badasses. Zoro, Franky, Baby, Perona, Law, and Bonney, they were there to balance out the others. And y'know, there were funny hijinks and wacky adventures and eventually they get a visit from this guy Krieg.

So Krieg's the kind of guy who is way too affable to be anything but evil, y'know? Turns out, he actually knows Sanji from back in the day. Killed his mentor and his friends. So Krieg decides he wants Little Garden for himself and storms the gates and starts trying to kill everyone. Well, all that gunfire starts drawing zombies closer and closer and soon this big-ass army of undead start munching on Krieg's dudes. So now our heroes have to cut through this huge swarm of zombies, which they finally do, but their outpost is in shambles.

Anyway, Baby straight up murders Krieg for what he did to Sanji and lets the other survivors high-tail it out of there. And then after all this, Nami's sister Nojiko shows up and says that they found some new colony, and they're in talks to forming a three-way alliance. Whomp whomp whaaaaa.

Yeah you should probably go back and read it all for yourself. Anyway, where were we? Oh yeah.

Zombie Day.

Rochester, New York.

Edward Newgate scowled down at the chaos below him. From the top floor of his company high-rise, he could see a myriad of citygoers reacting to the creeping zombie horde. Some were running in a panic, not paying attention to where they were running to. Some were already trying to fight back, swinging homemade weapons or firing their legally owned firearms like it was a dream come true. Some were looting, hoping that by gathering enough DVD players or mannequins, they would be able to either hide and wait for it to blow over, or run a barter town in the wake of the apocalypse. And some, Edward saw, were flipping over a cop car.

He found this to be a tremendous waste of time and energy, but this was an impending apocalypse. The narrative laws of the universe demanded certain conventions, and nothing screams "total anarchy" quite like an overturned police car.

Edward regarded all of this with disgust. Not the people's reactions, that was natural and he couldn't really fault them. He was reacting with disgust and not surprise because he had been planning for the end of the world for a while now. Not the way a paranoid conspiracy buff prepared because he saw a coded message in a politician's Twitter account. Eddy had been preparing because he was privvy to some pretty secure information that few others even knew existed. When he was a young man, which was a ridiculously long time ago, he brute-force learned some knowledge that did not want to be learned. His entire company was a front for preparing people for the end, in whatever way it would come. He sank a fortune into prepwork and yet it still caught him off-guard in the end.

He was not happy about that.

"Oh dear, this is bad. This is happening, isn't it? This is it…" One of his interns had snuck her way into his office. Tashigi was just a teenager who thought she could earn a few college credits getting coffee for businessmen. Then she actually read more about the company legislature and now she felt like she was trapped. She was still just getting coffee, but it felt far more serious when she understood what they were planning for. Now it was playing out in front of her eyes and she could not stop shaking.

"This is it," he said plainly, taking his eyes off the window for a moment to acknowledge her. "One of 'em, at least. Ain't as bad as what we coulda got, I guess."

"So… So what do we do? Are you going to organize a press conference or… Get a militia going?" She adjusted her glasses, the only thing she had control over right now.

Edward scoffed, shaking his head. "You know that was never in the plan. Going on TV now would do nothing. You know as well as I do, we can't broadcast what we know. We have to do this the direct way. Go put the word out downstairs, we're getting a few teams together. Tell them to gather survivors an' bring 'em here. We'll secure this place."

Tashigi nodded, but Eddy didn't see it. "I'll get right on it, sir." As she turned to leave, Edward called out for her again.

"Tashigi. The plan hasn't changed. We're still searching."

Tashigi swallowed hard, steeling herself as much as she could. "O-of course, sir."

Once she was gone, he was alone in his office. He finally looked away from the window to one of the many exotic decorations in his suite. This one was a solid black obelisk, rectangular and perfectly smooth. There were symbols carved into it, like a crappy alphabet designed to piss people off. He glared at it as if he just caught it pissing in his potted plants. "And I'll bet you think this is just fucking hilarious, don't you?" he said to it.

Meanwhile, several years in the future… Specifically, a week after Luffy and the others left for Little Garden. We're also no longer in Rochester, we're further north, in Canada.

There was a bar in Quebec. It was the sort of place you would expect to find in the end of the world. It probably used to be a classy bar that served local microbrews and had handmade barstools or something like that. But six years of wear and tear meant now it looked more like a rowdy medieval tavern. Bars were a necessity in the post-Zombie Day world. Life was stressful and people needed to either drink or get laid, and bars were great places to do one or both of those things.

General Smoker was drinking on that day, because he was in no mood to get laid. After all his work literally went up in smoke and the cult he had regrettably joined on the promise of saving the world, he decided he was done with the world saving business. So he was not happy when someone interrupted him to ask about world saving business. Someone in a hood.

"Howdy, General," the hooded man said, taking a seat next to him at the bar counter. "What can you tell me about Nico Robin?"

Smoker whirled his body around and sent a vicious right hook into the hooded man's face. He fell backwards out of his stool and crashed to the floor. Smoker flexed his hand, shaking the pain out of his knuckles before going back to his drink.

"What the hell, man?!" the guy shouted from the floor, trying to pick himself up. "I was just asking you a question, dude!"

"Cultists in hoods asking about Nico Robin is how I wasted two years of my life. I'm not dealing with her anymore."

The man rubbed his nose to make sure it wasn't bleeding. He approached the bar again, but a little more carefully this time. "I'm not in a damn cult, I'm just trying to find her so I can ask her some questions."

"Then why are you wearing that hood?"

The man gestured to the window. "It's raining outside. How long have you been in this bar?"

"A while, I guess." Smoker drummed his fingers on the bar counter. "Well. Sorry about punching you, then. I mistook you for someone else."

"It's fine… So do you know anything about her?"

"I haven't seen her in over a year," Smoker said. Talking about Nico Robin in general left a bad taste in his mouth, which he tried to wash out with his beer. "Last I saw of her was in Ohio, but I doubt she's still there. She might still be at the CDC. That's where we were heading before we parted ways."

The hooded man shrugged. "CDC's gone. Whole facility blew up, didn't you hear?"

Smoker's eyes narrowed. "Did a scrawny little ginger girl do it?"

"Dunno. We never found out what happened. Why, is this ginger girl important?"

"She's the one who ruined everything for me. Last I saw, she and this other kid were the ones with Robin. You should probably track them down. If I remember right, she lives in Boston. This place called… Ugh. Funkytown. So stupid."

"F- Okay…?" The hooded man waited for Smoker to continue, as if he had more information to share. "I don't suppose you could… escort my people there?"

"No." It came out quicker than the hooded man expected. "I'm done escorting people around. I'm retired from giving a shit."

"Fair enough," the hooded man said. He stood up from the bar counter and headed for the door, clearly knowing he was no longer wanted. "Oh, General!" he called out at the doorway. Again, narrative law demands certain conventions, such as a cryptic one-liner after parting way. "Thank you for bringing us one step closer to saving-"

"Don't care!" Smoker called out, raising his drink and not turning around.

Deflated, the hooded man turned around and walked out the door.

At another time, and another place, there was another bar. This one was way more of a shithole than the one Smoker was drinking in. If Smoker was drinking in a rowdy medieval pub, this place was more like a shack populated by angry, drunken vermin. It was not the kind of place where you would find good, upstanding citizens. It was the kind of place you would find a corpse, and you would know better than to ask if anyone was going to deal with the corpse or if the corpse was supposed to be there. Maybe it was just the bar's corpse or something.

Anyway, speaking of ne'er-do-wells, this bar was currently home to a handful of familiar faces. You might remember Monet, Helmeppo, and Caribou from the last story. They were part of Krieg's gang, and were among the few to actually escape with only psychological damage instead of physical.

Monet, intoxicated as all get-out, had been loudly complaining about the events that transpired in the last story, and how she was a total victim who had done nothing wrong and still lost everything. This caught the attention of a pair of hooded figures, who wanted to know more. They were especially intrigued when they heard her mention a woman who could just walk through the zombies unharmed.

They took our previous villains to a corner booth in the bar, where they could talk more privately, and Monet was more than happy to spill every detail her pickled brain could remember.

"She was cheatin'," Monet slurred. "Cheatin'! She could just walk through 'em like they weren't there! Like Zeus, partin' the Red Sea!"

"That was Moses," Helmeppo said.

Monet whirled around to him and jabbed him in the face with her finger. "FUCK! YOU!"

Helmeppo just grumbled into his drink before Monet turned back to the group. "So it's her fuckin' fault we got all torn up. Okay? The whole group, down t'... four of us."

"Three. We lost Vergo along the way, remember?" Helmeppo again interrupted, prompting Monet to elbow him in the ribs.

"So… You have any idea where I can find this woman?" one of the hooded figures asked.

Monet let out a long, exaggerated groan, rolling her head back for extra emphasis. "I don't fuuuuuckin' 'member! It was some bullshit place north a' here… Gah fuck this, my head hurts. I need t'sober up."

One of the hooded figures withdrew a pistol and pointed it at Caribou, who scrambled up in his seat, unable to move anywhere what with being pinned in the corner of the booth. Before he could shout anything in protest, the trigger was pulled and he slumped down in the booth, dead.

"Dude, that was wholly unnecessary," the hooded man's friend said. He quickly glanced around the bar, but no one seemed to really regard the gunshot, save for Monet and Helmeppo who were now clinging to each other in a trembling fear hug.

"HEY WOW LOOK AT ALL THE SOBER I JUST GOT." Monet squeaked out, wincing when the gun was instead aimed at her.

"Good. So let's try thinking it through again. Where can I find Nico Robin?"

Where was Nico Robin? She was at the same place she had been for the past few months. Ever since the encounter with Krieg, Little Garden outpost had done everything it could to remain vigilant for future attacks from a-holes. From boarding up nearby houses to prevent squatters, to more diligent patrol routes, they were determined to keep potential threats to a minimum. There was a recent stirring in the small community, though.

A month ago, Nojiko and Usopp had arrived on the usual supply drop-off and Nojiko reported that the girls' mother and Hancock were talking to another settlement a few states over. Apparently they were also interested in joining up with this alliance and the three leaders were in talks to work out a proper arrangement.

The Little Garden crew wondered why this would affect them, considering they didn't live in their respective settlements anymore, but two weeks later they got an answer when Johnny and Yosaku dropped off their biweekly supplies.

"Yo so check it, the deal's all squared up and stuff," Johnny had told them. "And to keep things all, y'know fair and whatever? The big guy, Newgate, he's gonna send his own six-man-band down here to Little Garden. You pickin' up what I'm sayin'? Roommates, yo!"

"Wait, they just made the decision without asking us first?!" Nami had said.

Zoro had rolled his eye, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Y'know, it's just like Empress Hancock to do something like this and just assume we'll all be okay with it."

"Bro, we're just the messengers, man. We didn't have anything to do with it, cool?" Yosaku explained. The two of them went on to explain who exactly was coming to town, or at least as much as they knew.

The group called themselves the Whitebeard Expedition Brotherhood. Like Hancock's group claimed to be pirates, the WEB were a band of adventurers.

"Oh yeah, I forgot you guys are supposed to be pirates," Sanji noted.

"So they're like… modern day treasure hunters?" Franky asked. "Wasn't Whitebeard the name of some big-shot banking company back in the day?"

Johnny shrugged. "I dunno. I didn't trust banks. I kept all my money in a hollowed out mattress."

"Bro, you didn't have any money back then," Yosaku muttered.

The WEB had a stated goal of keeping records of the world from before, and also preserving information about the world today. Their leader was Edward Newgate, a man as powerful and influential as he was old. Their members consisted of wildcards, brave souls with a thirst for adventure and lacking a fear of death. Cowboys, bounty hunters, and the like.

"The preservation of history, I can get behind that," Robin said.

"And I can get behind an army of badasses," Zoro also said.