Disclaimer: Do not own One Piece. All plot and OCs belong to Volleys-chan and I.
The Dragon Chronicles
Prologue
There once was a man called Gold Roger. He was known as the King of the Pirates and had riches beyond anyone's imagination. However, one day the Marines managed to capture him. Powerful and infamous as he was, it was of no surprise when hundreds of people attended his execution in Loguetown. Gold Roger instilled inspiration for adventure into the hearts all who would learned of his dying words.
"My fortune is yours for the taking, but you'll have to find it first. I have left everything I own in One Piece."
And thus the great race began to find Gold's treasure and become the next Pirate King...
"Ahoy! Land oh!"
Cheers were made at the prospect of finding land after days of braving the fierce ocean. However, they were cut off when the caller made the second announcement.
"Oh no! Pirates! What should we do?"
There was a slight hesitation before their fearless leader spoke the response. "We'll do what we always do, Suzume! Work with each other and fight against them! We are the Queens of the Deep Blue Sea and there are no pirates too great for us to beat!"
"Yay! Nee-vil Pie-wates! Fight!" The youngest of the three of them cheered, causing the others to pause and stare.
"No Usagi, not nevil, evil," Suzume groaned as she scolded the youngest sister. "If you don't get it right, you can't play."
"Don't worry about it Suzu, she's only five. She'll get it later, for now just correct her if she says it wrong and keep playing." The oldest said, patting her sister, Suzume, on the head.
"But Rei~" Suzume whined to the eldest as she pouted a bit, "Even I know it's not nevil and I'm six!"
"Six and a half," Rei corrected for her, "Usagi just turned five a month ago."
"Yeah! Meanie-head!" Usagi retorted, sticking her tongue out at her second older sister.
"Mom! Usagi's sticking her tongue out at me!" Suzume hollered, ditching her two sisters to go tell on the youngest of the three.
"Mooom! Suzu called me 'tupid!" Usagi quickly followed after the middle daughter in hopes to avoid punishment or perhaps bring her tattling sister down with her.
"I did not!"
"Did too!"
"Did not! Mom, Usagi's lying!"
"Am not!"
"Are too!"
"AM NOT!"
Rei just watched as the two totally forgot about the game and ran back inside the house where they would no doubt fight for at least half an hour while their mother tried to play referee. She giggled a bit to herself before continuing on in the game, with or without her sisters. Raising her toy sword in the air, she posed herself in a triumphant manner on the rocks she stood upon.
"Stay back ye scurvy dogs! You are no match for me! Rei Swift, the greatest good pirate of them all!" She yelled out to no one before beginning her fight with her imaginary foe.
Rei Swift was just like any little eight year old girl, full of energy and looking for fun. She and her two sisters, Suzume and Usagi, were often outside in their backyard playing together with their imaginations, going on great adventures that were exciting, daring, and even dangerous!
Their favorite thing to do was pretend they were fearless pirates, sailing the seas and striking fear into their enemies with their amazing strength and abilities. Sometimes they would end up fighting huge sea monsters, slaying them easily with their swords. All before snack time too!
Or there would be other times where they would find islands nobody had discovered yet, often filled with unknown plants and animals and sometimes people too! They would also discover maps that contained the location of ancient treasures and with all their riches would buy entire islands and become the people's rulers. They were always good to the people though and protected them from the bad guys!
All these wonderful adventures that Rei and her sisters would think up were all done in the safety of their backyard, often using sticks as swords, a log as their boat, and the huge rocks in their yard were sometimes islands and sometimes vicious sea monsters trying to eat them or their subjects.
The three girls all dreamed of becoming the kind of pirates they pretended to be. Perhaps their longings were fed by the endless tales of the great pirates sailing the seven seas and the freedom they seemed to have attained from their status in life. Rei would usually read to her sisters books filled with courageous characters who traveled around the world and conquering over evil. It was because of those stories that all three of them were certain that they would one day be like those characters, even if there were labeled as pirates.
Their parents would laugh at their daughters playfulness, encouraging the trio to dream big, but both secretly hoped that this phase of being pirates would soon be outgrown. Pirates were not welcome and often hunted by Marines and those affiliated with pirates were put in a dangerous position. However, since the girls were only children, their parents did the best they could to encourage good morals and manners from the girls. They would tell them that good pirates were virtuous and lived by a code of honor, despite the fact that most real pirates they had heard of did not.
Though Rei and her sisters were often playing outside, it didn't mean that was all they did. The girls had chores to do around the house, their mother slowly preparing them for the day when they would run their own household and have a family of their own.
The chores weren't too complicated, having to be simple enough to hold the attention of an eight year old, a six year old, and a five year old, but they were designed to keep the girls interested long enough to finish, like separating the white laundry from the colored laundry, putting all the toys in the toy box, making their beds, and dusting their room.
Since Rei was older than the other two, she also helped pull the sheets off the bed when it was time to wash them, clean the hardwood floors, and watch her baby brother, Maikya, when her mother was dealing with her sisters, cooking, or doing her other, more difficult chores.
Though the Swift family wasn't poor, they were not rich either so everyone in the family had to help out. Rei never minded the chores, in fact, she loved helping her mother, Koi, in any way possible often doing more than she was asked to do. Her sisters sometimes did more than what they were obligated, but at their age, they would rather play than work.
When Rei was finished with all her chores at the house, she usually headed straight for the general store that her father owned. There were several other general stores in town, but her father, Jon, was a good merchant and was capable of drawing in customers despite the rivalry the other stores created. Since Rei was extremely shy, her father had decided that it would be a good idea to have her assist him for a few hours a day.
Not only would she get use to being around other people, but perhaps become accustom to holding conversations without nervously stuttering out her words. Though she had yet shaken the habit of stuttering, Rei enjoyed working at the store. Her jobs weren't big, mostly just putting away their stock and tidying up the counters, tables, and floor, she always did her jobs the best she could so that the store always looked welcoming for the potential customers that would come in throughout the day.
Once she was finished, her father would shoo her out of the store before she insisted she stay and told her to go and play. Though some of the times Rei would go back to the house and begin playing with her sisters in the back yard, she usually meandered about the town, looking to see if she could help out any of her fellow villagers. Rei, though she was very shy, loved helping people in any way she could. Her whole family was very generous with their time and services, which was something the townspeople really admired about the family. During the preparation for special events, her family would donate food to help bring in tourists.
The villagers were famous around the area for their wonderful ability to make fireworks; hence the island's name Fireworks Island. People would come from neighboring islands just to see the villagers launch their handmade fireworks into the night sky. However, by gathering crowds to see their fireworks, the village also thrived on the money the tourist would spend while at Fireworks Island's festivals. So, in order to help keep Fireworks Island thriving, the Swift family was willing to give a helping hand in anything that needed to be done.
Even Rei loved to help the villagers. Though she was very shy and quiet, she almost instantly brightened up at the opportunity to help. She would help with anything that she could from carrying groceries for the older villagers to just being there to listen. She still didn't say much, even when she was helping, but she felt like she really got a feel for the person she was helping, just by observing and listening and felt closer to them through that.
Through her good deeds, Rei became a loved member of the village, often her praises sung by those she helped. She couldn't help but be embarrassed when they continually talked about her to her parents. While her father and mother were ecstatic about her popularity around the village, Rei detested the extra attention. She would have preferred it if the people she helped had just kept quiet about it. She didn't like being in the center of attention, unlike her sisters who reveled in it.
If anything, she wanted to fit in and melt away into the crowds just like anybody else, but she couldn't. It wasn't always because of her good deeds she did around the village, in fact the tourist didn't even know anything about her charity towards her fellow villagers and they still would stare at her. Too enthralled by the one feature that made her stand out and isolate her from the rest: her bright red eyes.
Rei knew it was because of her eyes. She could be picked out of a group of children playing on a playground just because of her rare eye color. She knew it was rare, no one else she had ever met had her same color, not even her family. Suzume was the closest in eye color, but hers were only a few shades brighter than their father's, Usagi's, and Maikya's. The rest of had a reddish-brown color that while it could look red, was too dull to be as visible as hers, which she swore could be seen easily in the dark. Her already shy disposition around other people make this anomaly everything even worse. It isolated her from other people, making her different and abnormal.
And because her eyes did so, she disliked them. However, Rei couldn't help but wonder why her eyes were the way they were. Her father didn't know, only stating that it was a family trait from his side, but he couldn't remember having any family with eyes as fiery red as hers. He would always proceed to praising her eye color, claiming that they were beautiful. Rei couldn't see them that way, just another way she was different from the rest of the villagers.
Perhaps, she always pondered, she could discover why her father's family had red eyes and why hers were even more brilliant than the rest. It was definitely something she was interested in uncovering.
Little Rei didn't know it then, but one day she could come to appreciate her exotic eye coloring after discovering the history behind those ruby eyes.
A/N: Please visit my profile for additional information about the making of the story. This is only the prologue and it will be a slow paced, but the plot will develop with more characters. And this is my first fan fiction, so when reviewing, please keep flames to yourself but constructive criticism is always welcomed. This is a collaboration between my friend Volleys-chan and myself, so please take care of this story.
I have been writing this story since October 30, 2011. I have not posted until now because I have gone through extensive editing, due to character and plot development. This story you are reading is not the same story that I had Volleys-chan beta'd. The story evolved through the course of writing, causing me to rewrite it to ensure a consistent tone throughout the story.