Author's Note: Though I'd try a longer story and I've been kicking around a One Piece story for a while. I tried to shape an original "Filler" arc for the story, with its own self-contained villains and locations. P.S. Does anyone know what a wind-based Logia fruit should be called?
The Thousand Sunny was a fascinating ship when one stopped to consider it, awe-inspiring really. Ignore the advanced technology and interesting design of what appeared to be a sunflower with a rodent's face, those are incidental. The ship was built with the parts of Treasure Tree Adam, the most valuable wood-type known to man and represented the dreams of hunted criminals seeking to cross a thousand seas and circle the globe.
With such majesty, one would think the ship would be treated with respect. Clearly, one was comically wrong as the ship was pelted with cannonballs and gunfire from the three Marine ships more-or-less surrounding the boat.
Before one of the metal balls could reach its target, a man with a straw hat on his head and an x-shaped scar on his chest charged towards it and ballooned his stomach to massive proportions.
The cannonball struck the flesh, which bent inwards like rubber, before snapping backwards and sending the projectile back into the vessel that had first launched it, a smoking crater decorating the hull as a result.
"Shishishi~," the rubber man chuckled as he observed his handiwork on the previously pursuing marine ship.
Another cannonball soon barrelled through the air but this time, the man casually grabbed his head and stretched his neck so that the ball skimmed the side of his neck while missing his head… and striking the green haired man emerging from the stairs in the face, resulting in him tumbling back inwards and shouting a pained, "Luffy!"
"Eh… what does Zoro want? Did the fighting wake him up?" Luffy thought aloud without one iota of sarcasm as he picked his nose.
The Sunny's own cannons began returning fire, a voice shouting up at the same time, "Oy Luffy, Franky said he'll have the Coup de Burst ready once he's loaded the Cola!"
"Yay, we're going to fly again, shishishi~!" Luffy shouted like the moron his closest friends and family swore him to be. "Hey, Nami, where are we heading again?!"
"We should be going East but there's a weird wind blowing in that direction," Nami answered while pouring over a faded map. "The old man who sold me this said that the area has a lot of storms but is otherwise totally serene. A storm would explain the wind but this doesn't feel like a storm and it's meant to be the dry season anyway. What's happening?"
Zoro's re-emergence from the door saw him more prepared as he easily used one of his three swords to slice approaching cannonballs in two, the metal clunks flying harmlessly off into the distance without ever touching the one-eyed swordsman or his dark green coat.
Save for Usopp operating the cannons, Nami pouring over her navigational equipment and Franky loading barrels of cola to secure their escape, the rest of the crew had joined the fray alongside their Supernova shipmates. Sanji was belting the Marine's cannonballs back with the ease of a trained soccer player, Chopper was using guard point to act as an adorable fuzzy shield, Robin was forming massive interlinking nets of her own hands to gather up piles of the cannonballs before dumping them harmlessly into the water while Brook played a blood-pumping medley to keep the other Straw Hats moving after his attempt to freeze the oncoming projectiles, in his own words, proved as meatless as his skeletal figure ("Yohohoh~ skull joke!").
This chaos served as the perfect background for Luffy to grip the railing of one of the three surrounding ships using his elongated arms and launch himself into the crew's shocked midst.
Clearly unprepared for the sudden action, those gathered on the deck were all swept into the ocean with one swing of his long arm. The resounding splashes only deepened his grin as he skilfully dodged the marines pouring out of the other areas of the ship to compensate for their lost comrades.
In a show of unity that would touch the heart of onlookers, each gave a fitting tribute to their lost allies… by going down in one hit as Luffy threw himself throughout the ship in an unstoppable frenzy, giggling all the while.
Meanwhile, on his own ship, Franky watched the last portions of fizzy fuel lowered into the engine with a manic grin. His green hair kept flat save for two long tendrils that drifted down towards his eyes, curling up underneath them like ant legs, a feature often missed by those first observing the colossal, partially metallic behemoth of a man. Also he was only wearing a black speedo on his lower body, so hair was pretty low down on everyone's priority list the first time they spotted him.
"It's reeeeaddddyyy!" he cried up boisterously before bringing his hands over his head and stretching them out to the side with a punctuating "OW!"
"Alright, everyone set?!" Usopp called up, only to groan when Robin's voice calmly spoke through a mouth that had appeared on the Coup de Burst's lever, "No, the Captain is currently on one of the other ships."
"Then get him back here!" Usopp cried frantically into the speaker. "I don't want to be surrounded anymore," he muttered pathetically as his knees knocked together, his pride only saved by the fact that none of his other crewmates could hear him.
"You'll be fine, Long Nose," Robin assured gently, making Usopp jump in surprise. The archaeologist continued in the same comforting tone, "The worst thing that could happen is you'd be captured and condemned to a life of tortures unimaginable to the normal man. So relax."
"Tortures…" Usopp mumbled, biting his nails as he rocked back and forth on his heels slightly, desperate to run away.
Nami, meanwhile, was far more in control of the situation as she leaned over the railing of the ship and shrilly screamed, "Luffy, get your butt back over here before I come over there to kick it!"
Hearing his navigator's threat, Luffy gulped as his arms stretched to grab the Sunny's mast like his life depended on it (if Nami had her way, Luffy wasn't too sure it didn't). Just as he jumped, one of the marines, craftier than his fellows, sprung forward and slapped what appeared to be a shackle on the thinnest part of Luffy's ankle.
"I did it!" he cried triumphantly as his face slid down the wooden bar at the front of the ship, his smashed nose making his words sound closer to, "Wi wit ij." (far quieter than he intended), as was the natural result of holding onto a high speed object that he had no chance of stopping.
Unfortunately for Luffy, the shackle appeared to be made of Kairoseki, a wondrous material that warded off Sea Kings and left Devil Fruit users powerless and bereft of energy. Thus, Luffy had neither control of his trajectory nor any ability to land softly, causing him to crash clean through the hull of the Thousand Sunny and into one of the lower decks.
The resulting noise and debris tipped the already jumpy Usopp's nerves over the edge and as soon as he saw Luffy (smashing through the wall beside him and ending up two rooms over) was back aboard the Straw Hat's flagship, he pulled the lever causing the modified vent at the back of the ship to roar to life as it released a freakish "Burst" worthy of its name.
Having been knocked slightly sideways by its commanding officer, the ship's flight through the air, instead of sending them towards clear, calm seas (by New World standards), had them aimed directly at a cliff face.
Several of the Straw Hats screamed at their oncoming fate and others swore while most plotted under their breath to murder their Captain if they survived.
Nami was literally counting off the distance in her head, resigned as she was to her fate.
"Seven seconds… five seconds… three seconds… two seconds… four seconds… wait," "What?"
The ship had miraculously been caught by the odd gale that the redheaded Cat Burglar had been thinking off earlier and was sent twirling towards the sand at a still pretty intense pace.
Luffy was at this point still lying upside-down in a pile of chairs with the same dopey expression he wore whenever exposed to Kairoseki on his face. His eyes lazily soaked in the horizon until a weird, flying shadow in the corner of his vision grabbed his attention, he tried to raise himself up to get a better look but the ship was already tumbling by that point. Once it had completed a 360 degree arc, the shadow had completely vanished.
"That looked like… a guy," Luffy wondered dumbly, his expression casual and his smallest finger once again probing his nose.
It remained like that right up until there was a loud crash as the hull of the Thousand Sunny struck sand on the miles of beach, dragging through it for a moment before coming to a gradual halt.
Luffy was sent tumbling out of the ship in that instant (through the hole that he'd made) and left face down in the sand. He pushed himself up to see a few nervous looking people gathered atop the cliff that ran along the beach's edge almost as far as the eye could see.
Author's Note: There's the first chapter. How was it? Attention grabbing enough? Humorous enough? Would you read more? Should I scrap it? All comments and criticisms are welcome, even in guest review format if you feel uncomfortable signing your name to what you're saying.