Prolog

I wonder what it feels like to be a broken mirror sometimes. When I look at the broken mirror hanging in my bedroom I feel like that's the real me. With so many lines breaking my mind up, a ton of little chips and cracks from my life. Every single one of them is something that happened to me. A little crack from failing a project in school, a chip from when I lost my favorite shirt as a kid, a big shard missing from when I was first hit by my dad.

I've looked for it and tried to glue pieces back together but it's never the same. I can never get them just right. I like to think that if everyone had a mirror that reflected their lives, that everyone would have cracks and chips in them. But sometimes I think I'm the only one with a mirror this bad. That it's just my imagination and everyone else's mirror is shining and spotless. I know that's not true though. I know everyone has problems, everyone has cracks but I really think mines the worst out there sometime. I see people walking down the street and look at their eyes, their clothes, how they walk, and simply try to take them all in. Then I think of what their mirror would look like. Sometimes it's only a few cracks or a missing shard, but other times it looks like they used glue to try and fix it.

Sometimes it's hard to find the ones who used glue because they used it really well and it worked. But other times I find people who I can tell tried to use glue but it didn't turn out to well. There's a few pieces missing or in the wrong place. When I see those people it makes me feel sorry for them. I can tell they've tried to fix themselves, but they're mirror was already so cracked and broken. They couldn't fix the mirror correctly.

But it's the people who you least expect to have cracks that have them the worst. And the place that's always the worst is schools. A teacher you think is so cool with their lives in total control really has a mirror that was totally shattered a few years earlier. It's even worse for student though. A student who looks like they have a perfect life could really have too many fractures to count. But you can only find out if you watch what they do and listen really to what they say.

That was me only a few years ago. Now my students call me Mrs. Robin and my mirror was shattered before. I've glued it back together so nobody can tell it was broken but it still feels broken to me. Nobody knows about my past and I want it to stay that way. When you give people a look at your mirror, your innermost secrets and your very soul…it changes their view of you and you can never change it back to the way it was. Schools normally wouldn't allow somebody with my past to teach high school kids but with a computer my past is gone with my old mirror and replaced with a loving home, supportive parents and a shiny new mirror without a crack in it.

So when I came to the city I grew up in, a city with a school that caused more cracks then I could count in only four years, with a master's degree in both history and archeology they couldn't turn me down. The pay isn't good and my apartment is pretty small but I needed to do this. To fix this part of my mirror, not with glue but to really fix it, like it was never broken at all. I can't do that in therapy or talking to somebody. I need to confront it head on. It's taken me years to get my mirror to look this polished and clean but it still feels broken and I can't stand it anymore.

"Mrs. Robin!" a shout came from the front of the class snapping her out of her trance. "Mrs. Robin are you alright? You looked really out of it."

"Ah, yes. Sorry class I was just thinking about an old friend." I apologized while walking over to my desk. I sat down and looked at the attendance sheet. "Where were we? Oh right, Monkey D. Luffy." I looked up and around the class expecting a hand up and a quick 'here' but not getting one. "Monkey D. Luffy!" I repeated thinking he just didn't hear me, but still nothing. "Alright then, absent" But just as I was about to mark his name with a big X the door swung open. The boy slowly limped in and to the very back of the class and sat down. He wore a red sweatshirt and blue shorts and had long black hair that looked like it hadn't been combed in years. There were two odd things about his boy, one he had a straw hat on with a red stripe going all the way around it and two his eyes looked strange.

"Are you Monkey D. Luffy?" I asked.

"Here" He said. Then it hit me this boys eyes were just like hers. His eyes were broken so absolutely the only thing keeping them together was the blackness all around them. She marked him present and then made a note to self.

There's another shattered mirror in my class. This is going to be interesting.

CHAPER 1- Luffy

"DAMN BRAT!" screamed my dad as he slammed me into my bedroom wall. He picked me up again and threw me to the floor knocking the breath out of me. I saw he was about to move and I just had time to move into the fetal position as his foot crashed into my side. "AHHH!" I yelled as the pain boomed through my body. He lifted his leg again and smashed it against my ribs making me cough up blood. He kept kicking me until I felt him stop and heard him breath in. I thought he was done for the night. He never goes for too long before he leaves me for the night and goes to bed to sleep off the booze. I closed my eyes and heard him walk around me, almost like he was admiring his handy work.

Then I heard him take a deep breath. I knew something big was coming. Maybe I final kick to the gut then he would leave. But I was wrong again. I heard him take his leg back, heard him take it up, and heard him exhale as he slammed down right on my right leg. "AHHHHHH!" I screamed louder than before. It felt like he'd broken the bone or even went right threw my leg. He twisted his foot and I screamed again before he lifted his leg off.

"SHUT THE HELL UP ALREADY!" I had time to take in another breath before I turned and saw his foot moving at what looked like the speed of sound but felt like an eternity before it collided with my face.

I'm guessing it was about two hours later that I woke up. I was in the exact same place with even more pain than before. I knew I had to take care of the worst injuries first so I went to the worst pain besides my face, my leg. It wasn't pretty. There was a huge deep purple bruise that was about the size of a baseball that covered a huge portion of my thigh. It didn't look broken but I don't know what a broken leg looks like. I thought it would b fine if I just rested. But that's the problem when your family beat you, you were never safe. Thinking back and looking at the floor at the blood I'd coughed up I knew that was a big issue too. I laid back on the floor thinking of what to do next.

I smiled and knew it was time to break out my special treat. I sat up slowly to keep the pain at a low throbbing. Then I grabbed the sheets of my bed and hauled myself up on one leg. I put a little weight on my leg and bit my lip to keep from crying out and waking my dad. I hobbled over to my dresser and pulled out the bottom drawer and put my hand under it to the small space below the drawer and wood and started to feel around. After a few seconds I felt it and clutched to it like a lifeline. Then I brought it into the light of the room. It was a bottle of cheap whisky I'd stolen from my dad two months earlier. I'd gotten a worse beating than normal but he never found it, then he just sort forgot about it. Totally worth it.

It was about nine o'clock and tomorrow was the first day of my sophomore year. I knew it was going to be the same as it was last year and the year before that and the year before that. With teachers who don't care, students who beat on each other like animals, and more scars and pain. So instead of partying and celebrating the last day of summer break like everyone else in the country I was sitting alone in my bed drinking whisky some cheap whisky. What a blast!

I normally didn't drink but I felt like I needed to this time. I could tell that the beatings were getting worse every time and it was only a matter of time before….well I don't like to think about that. But as I laid back in my old crappy bed I couldn't help but feel like something was coming. Something in the air made me feel like something that was just… NEW was on its way. But I couldn't tell if it was good or bad. I couldn't tell whether I would be freed of my prison or was simply put in an even worse one.

I took another sip of the cheap whiskey trying to forget all of the bad things that have happened this summer. It was hard to think about all of the bad. It made my scars start to burn thinking about all of the punches, kicks, and beating I've received in the past few weeks. I laid back and took a long drink. School's something I've never been very good at but I've never been terrible at it either. I got C's and B's and maybe even an A now and then so people never looked at me for too long and decided everything was fine with me. It took me about an hour to finish the bottle and by the end I was so drunk when I sat up I was dizzy.

I hated the feeling of being drunk but it was something I did to stop the pain in my leg. I couldn't go to the hospital because then they'd know about how my dad beat me, and that was something I simply couldn't live with. Honor was the one thing I value and I refused to break my pact with…him. And that was the last thing I thought before I passed out.

I woke up by the sound of my alarm clock buzzing. "Oh god my head." I whined while sitting up. I looked at the time "7:55" I said to myself letting it sink in. "Crap I'm going to be late!" I started to stand up when a shotgun of pain went through my leg. "UHHH damn that HURTS!" I bawled I pulled up my shorts to see a purple bruise the size of a baseball. I grabbed the bed and hauled myself up and managed t o hobble over to my dresser. From the look of the sky it looked like it was going to rain. I smiled a little. I always loved the rain. I put on a pair of blue shorts and a plain red sweatshirt with nothing under because my skin was still raw from last night. I grabbed my backpack and was about to go out the door when turned back and grabbed my straw hat from the top of my dresser. I stopped and looked at my old mirror on the wall. It looked like there was a new crack on it. Then I was out the door and limping to school.