Author's Note: This was written for Nehszriah, in exchange for her wonderful, wonderful Wiper/Conis drawing! Though…um…this isn't quite what I intended, and I'm pretty sure it's not what you expected either, Nehszriah…

Disclaimer: I don't own Norland, Kalgara, Oda, or the world of One Piece. And this is meant as humor, so…er…don't take anything seriously. (sees a pack of furious lawyers running at her) Eep! (runs away)

The New Age of Piracy

It was Thursday, June 14th of the year 2007 when the apocalypse struck the world of One Piece. Of course, the fans were completely unsuspecting of this incident. Even the author was unsuspecting of this occurrence. This tragedy-

But wait. I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning.

You see, as we all know, authors have a completely different way of thinking from normal people. Now, I'm not saying that they're insane (even though just about everyone is insane; have you noticed?), since I can be no judge of that, being a normal person myself. But to us, characters of stories are just fake people in a fake world.

Authors disagree. Particularly the authors who make these characters to put in their stories. Some authors don't talk like this (some normal people do become authors, after all), but many say that either the characters or the story came alive and the story just wrote itself.

Rubbish, of course. How could a story write itself? Next thing you know, an author'll miss his deadline and say that it was because the story refused to write itself because it wanted some lemonade when he was out of lemons!

Then again, how would authors know that lemonade was made out of lemons? They'd probably try to make it out of cabbages.

Anyway, regardless of how psychotic authors may be to think that their stories can write themselves and that lemonade is made out of cabbages, that's what they think (though the cabbages are merely a theory, so don't cite me on that one). That isn't actually what happens though, as we normal people all know. The author writes the story and comes up with all the places and people and occurrences, even if the author won't admit it (unless it was plagiarism, but that's illegal and beside the point). The characters don't exactly jump out of the book into the author's room and write the story, no matter what authors say nowadays.

And if you believe those movies and books and other such stories about characters leaping out of books and television and all that, you're very, very naïve…or maybe you're just an author yourself. Because that doesn't happen in real life. Got it? Good.

Now, anyway, the authors actually aren't as stupid as their crazy words lead us to believe. They know that they're the ones doing the writing. They know full well not to expect a character to leap out of their book suddenly and say, "Hey! Don't make me fall in love with that character! You're putting me way out of character!" or "Come on, please stop killing off my friends? You're depressing me, and you could bring them back to life if you'd just delete all those lines…". If they could do that, then the fan fictions we read these days wouldn't have so many characters who defy the basic laws of their personalities set down by the author (and those pairings that make no sense, of course, would be far, far from existence), and there would be quite a few depressing books out there that would no longer exist, as the characters probably would have held some sort of rebellion against their book being so depressing.

But the characters don't have the power to leap out of their stories and scream at their author for making them miserable or out of character, which is why we're all overrun with depressing, angst-filled books and crazy One Piece fan fiction where everyone's been paired with everyone else at least once.

Oda Eiichiro may be very perverted (why else does he keep putting Nami naked and in the bath?) and very sexist (how many women actually have figures like that? None! One Piece women are worse than Barbie dolls—those figures shouldn't be possible), but like most authors, he believes that his characters 'come alive' and that he's just the vessel that they channel from their own One Piece world. Also, like most authors, he doesn't believe that they'll actually come leaping out of the pages he's writing to yell at him. Not that they'd ever need to, since he's one of those authors that knows how to keep his own characters in character. I know, they're so rare these days, aren't they?

Not to say that character development is bad. Oda Eiichiro is developing his characters all the time! I mean, compare the Nami from volume two with this recent Nami on Ghost Island. They're obviously the same character, but you've got to admit that she's loosened up quite a bit. And Luffy's matured (yes he has, don't tell me he's stupid and simple-minded—look at the fight with Usopp!), Zoro's grown more and more obsessed with control over every aspect of himself, Usopp's learned to respect status on a pirate ship properly (the chapter where he suddenly turned pervert will not be mentioned here) Robin's happier, and so on. And it's not even just the main characters. Conis seemed a timid, submissive, weak girl, but in crisis proved to be one of the most reliable people on Skypeia; Norland seemed strong as a rock, but in light of overwhelming relief, gave way to tears. But I'm not here to analyze characters, I'm here to tell you a story. The only reason I'm analyzing characters is because some of you don't seem to be able pick this sort of thing up. Just look at all those One Piece characters that are sickeningly out of character in fan fictions! That really ought to speak for itself.

So, where was I? Oh, yes. Character development. So, Oda develops his characters, but keeps them in character in doing so, while some other authors seem incapable of that. Particularly series authors, where a character starts out nice and mature and gets more and more immature as the series goes on and on and on. Oda's just a genius that way. But I'm not here to sing odes to Oda Eiichiro either.

You see, Oda always believed that the characters were a part of his mind. That they were alive, but still restricted to his mind.

So he received a bit of a shock at 3:41am on Thursday, June 14th when, after a long night of working hard without sleep simply because he felt like it, he looked up from his desk to see two very, very familiar faces that should not have been there glaring down at him.

Naturally (well, not so natural, since he was an author), his first thought was that he had stayed up too long (he didn't usually do late nights. Practically never actually, except when it was really necessary—usually after more procrastination than he should have done), so he dragged his feet across the room to the doorway and dropped down onto the couch for some (in his mind) well-deserved rest.

He was shocked fully awake seventy-three seconds later when a large bucket of cold water was dumped onto him. He no longer felt sleepy in the least, and blinked up at the faces above him.

"Do you have a death wish?" growled the man dressed in a rather…primitive style. "Because if you do, I'd be way more than happy to comply!"

Oda could only blink up at her in his state of confused befuddlement. That voice sounded so…so…real!

"Well?" demanded the other man.

"Um…who are you? How did you get in?"

The man with a chestnut on his head (not the primitive one. With his style of dress, he shouldn't have been too much out of place in Europe a few centuries back) tapped his foot impatiently, arms crossed.

"I'll pretend you didn't just ask that. Why did you bring us here?"

Oda looked from one man to the other.

"I…brought you here?"

"I would assume so, considering how we were just dragged out of our normal world and dumped into this messed up one."

"Okay, then go back. Shoo. Abracadabra." With that said, Oda rolled over and dozed off again.

And was promptly doused in cold water. Again.

Oda leapt up with a screech.

"That's cold! Don't you have any respect for me?"

The primitive-looking man and the chestnut-man exchanged a look and snorted.

"No," they replied in unison.

"If you are who you think you are, I created you. You ought to have some respect for me for that."

"Sure, you created us," growled the primitive man, sticking his spear at Oda's throat. "You created our tragic lives. You brought us together, then separated us."

The chestnut man's glare was just as fierce.

But Oda was not paying any attention to their glares—he looked between them. That had sounded so…so not friend-like and more as if they were…

"Wait…" he said slowly, glancing from one man to the other. "You weren't… What in the world were you two doing behind those pages? I intended you two as simple friends! You can't just go around and-"

"Do not finish that sentence!" the chestnut man who was, Oda now believed, Mombran Norland. "We never…never…" He didn't have it in him to say it. "We've always just been really good friends, right Kalgara?"

Apparently, he was desperate enough to turn to his friend for support, and Kalgara proved willing enough to give it. He nodded vigorously.

"Yep. Just friends." There was a pause, during which Kalgara seemed to realize that they way they were saying it sounded as though they were both in serious denial. "Really. The only time I've ever seen Norland come even remotely close to possessing that particular 'deadly sin' was when he was looking at my daughter."

"I did not look at Mousse with lust!" Norland protested. "I've thought about my daughter when I look at her—I have never felt any lust for her!"

Kalgara's look just bled skepticism, but he let it slide.

"And either way," he said, turning back to Oda, "I'm furious at the way that you've depicted my daughter.

"What's wrong with her?" sighed a now very annoyed and tired Oda who just wanted to get away and go to sleep. "She's very pretty, if you ask me."

"Ha!" pointed Norland. "He's been lusting after Mousse, not me!"

"That would make sense…" murmured Kalgara thoughtfully. "He draws us, so if he was feeling particularly lustful of Mousse just when he was drawing you looking at her…"

"Hey," Oda held up his hands. "You can't blame me! She's very, very pretty! Probably one of the prettiest people in Skypeia."

He probably would have been better off denying it, rather than admitting that he was guilty as charged.

"She doesn't belong in Skypeia," growled Kalgara menacingly, "Which is why we're still here bugging you, as opposed to far, far away trying to find a way back to our own world that doesn't involve lecherous old men like yourself. But before we get to that…" His spearhead pushed against Oda's throat. Oda gulped. "My daughter is not meant to be goggled at by the filthy, lustful male specimen-"

"Of which you are a part," Oda pointed out.

"-That excludes Norland and myself," glared Kalgara. "Why do you draw all your women that way? It's perfectly fine that there be a few women that are that shape, but my daughter? I won't stand for it! I've seen the way those boys goggle at her! Hell, I've seen the way you goggle at her, and I almost killed Norland for it, did you know that?"

The fact that Norland didn't gulp and Oda did was probably the greatest possible proof that it had been Oda, not Norland, who had looked at Mousse that way.

"It's all well and good that my daughter's the prettiest girl in the village—I've got nothing against that—but do you have to make women's bodies so exaggerated?" demanded Kalgara. Oda just stared blankly up at him.

Then Oda spoke.

"So you and Norland haven't done anything, but you do want each other," he concluded with a nod. "I thought so."

Kalgara and Norland's jaws dropped.

"How do you come to that conclusion?" Norland demanded when he finally found his voice.

"Any healthy, straight man would be happy that I fill his world with women like that. The fact that Kalgara's going on about how it's so horrible is proof that he's either not healthy or not straight. He looks perfectly healthy to me, and hence is not straight."

"But how do I figure into that?" Norland demanded before Kalgara could protest.

"Have you seen the way he looks at you?"

Norland and Kalgara stared at Oda blankly. Then they looked at each other.

"Do you look at me with lust in your eyes?" Norland asked in (apparent) complete seriousness after a long, long pause.

"Oh yes. I undress you with my eyes every chance I get," Kalgara replied in (apparent) equal seriousness.

There was another pause.

And then Norland and Kalgara doubled over, laughing so hard that they had to cling to each other to keep from collapsing to the floor in convulsive laughter.

Oda blinked blankly.

When Norland and Kalgara finally calmed down (4 minutes and 69 seconds later, also known as 5 minutes and 9 seconds, 309 seconds, 2 minutes and 189 seconds, 3 minutes and 129 seconds, or 1 minute and 249 seconds later), they had to take a few deep breaths before they could speak properly.

"So, you look at Norland with lust, do you?" Kalgara asked Oda, raising an eyebrow.

"I do not!" Oda protested.

"And that's exactly why I wound up with lust in my eyes that I have no recollection of ever feeling."

Now both Kalgara's and Norland's eyes were glinting with menace. Oda gulped.

Then he turned and ran.

Thirteen seconds later, the world of One Piece was rocking and shaking and trembling, and screams were resounding from the sky.

The apocalypse had arrived, the people realized, and everyone ran.

…And that would explain why our world is now full of crazy people, wouldn't it? Because an author was murdered by his own characters and all the other characters escaped from his head.

Beware the New Age of Piracy!