Note: Due to ffn very strange and unfriendly formatting settings, following goes: anything center-aligned is supposed to be typed like a Typewriter texts (quotes sort of) and what is center-aligned and italic is supposed to be stroked through. I hate to do this but for this chapter I recommend reading it over on AO3 (same title, same author name)

Also: This is the remake of my dropped story Cyclone. Check my author's profile for more information.

Prologue

"There's another wave coming!" yelled from the railing, its announcement merely a desperate way to do anything at all. "What the hell are we going to do?" Men were running about, securing the ship, fastening ropes where values should remain safe from the clutches of the seas. "Just keep going! I'm trying to find a way fo-" the wave swallowed their breaths and words and visions, yet they kept themselves above the surface. For how long?

What was the ocean but the collections of drowned beliefs and dreams, the core drives of man's self-esteem?

Wherever the water hadn't reached the ship, their panic found shelter. Pushing and shoving, the ship had no course anymore but where the storm wanted it to go. Were they to follow, they wouldn't return. "Nami! What should we do? The waves are going to push us over!"

"Don't you think I know? I don't know, we just need to try fighting against them! The storm should be over soon!" hands holding onto the ship, grasping whatever chance there was left, with wood so soaked up with seawater and fear.

How to keep a solid footing where no soil forms a ground to stand on? how to keep a balance in a shapeless world?

Once her hands let go, too tired from holding on for life, her body was lost in the forces of the storm and the clutch of the ocean. Without her, their hope was gone, and their lives, too. No attempt could change their fate, one by one they followed her, robbed of their willpower, betrayed by the freedom they had ever so trusted.

If anything could be

"Is this real? It's just a nightmare-"

With no shore to

"Luffy!"

A new day must come.

"Yes, what?" His fingers hovered over the keys, the next words already threatening to slip from their tips. Annoyance was an overwhelming sensation, to dread because it loosened the concentration from his mind.

Sounding closer but no bodily shape in sight, the voice resumed the violent action to tear his thoughts from his hands. "Didn't I tell you take out the trash? I'm running late so could you please finally do as I say? For once, maybe?" She joined her words in the doorway to his room, his little hideout from the world.

Slipped. The emotions replaced by agitation and finally by defeat, no more linked to the thoughts he needed to type down. All gone, what he couldn't feel, he couldn't put into words. "I'll do it, Robin." So hollow but that wasn't her blame to take—his resolve had been swept away.

"Fine," she forced a smile, knowing well how her good intentions weren't seeping through to him. "I don't mean to cage you in rules but it would make life easier if we shared the chores. And you could use some inspirational walk."

Luffy turned around with a grin growing on his lips. "To the dumpster. Sure."

"Yes, why not. If others gain inspirations while on the toilet, why can't you find your muse on the way to the dumpster?" Though filling each word with her characteristic humour, she remained with a neutral face for a whole moment until she curved her lips into a smile. Wasn't his grin still contagious, she thought.

No longer annoyed by her—how could he ever—Luffy rolled his eyes and turned back to the typewriter, the grin nearly turning up into laughter. "Go to work finally! Your brain must be bored…"

"Until I have to read through your mess of grammar tonight." Robin said her goodbye, one of her disembodied hands brushing his chaos of raven black hair to one side in her unique kind of affection, and left to work.

"What mess of grammar, it's gotten better…" Luffy mumbled, ruffling through his hair to reinstall his hairstyle. At least his words matched his meanings and those came across just nicely and exactly as he wanted them to reach the reader. Would he amaze her otherwise?

A new day must come. To find what's lost.︳