The very first female pirate was one Vera, known by the epithet as "The Red Lady" for her cherry lipstick and the blood left in her wake. Vera escaped the marines to a small island in the East Blue, where she settled down and had three daughters. Each daughter in turn became pirates.
Marie, the eldest, became "Miss Fortune" and spread chaos and discord across the seas. Liza, the middle child, was known as "The Nimble Thief" for her distracting acrobatics. Finally, there was the youngest of the three sisters, Anna. She was arguably the most famous and her name has been held on record in the Marine HQ as one of the few epithets to never be given to any pirate again. She was known as "Hell's Illusionist."
Anna evaded the marines through her illusions, and in turn settled down to start a family. She told her children of her adventures, and though her two sons became respectable men who hid their mother's identity, her daughters took up the Jolly Roger as well.
This trend continued through the ascension of such infamous crews as the Rumbar pirates and the actions of the rookie Gol D. Roger. In time, it led down to "The Florist" Flora, who in turn had six daughters. Our story follows the journey of the youngest, one Char, who would continue the family tradition in playing the Ultimate Game.
Disclaimer; I do not own One Piece! I do however own my OCs but am reasonable over the idea being used by others. It's just that I noticed that there are female pirates, but they are noticeably few in number, so I wanted to tell a story about someone descending from the first female pirate. At first it was going to be about the First Female Pirate, but I realized that it would've taken place in the Void Century or before then and I have no idea of what the world was like then.
Plus it came to me in a dream.
Chapter 1: In Which the Rules of Engagement are Written.
Char had set out from home earlier than any of her big sisters had, but staying home after her mother passed away hadn't seemed very fun. She was ten years old and ready for new games and stories, and what better stories than those that were true? So she left a message with her father in case one of her sisters came home for a visit and bought passage to the next island over.
Shells Town had a big marine base on it, and more importantly, plenty of tourists who didn't stay long enough to realize they were getting scammed by the cute kid who asked for directions. Of course, she had a few neat toys to help her make her daring escape.
Her most precious of which being the blue-grey cloak that held the power imbued in it long ago by her personal favorite ancestress, the Hell's Illusionist. As the family history read Anna had only escaped the marines because she had this cloak, which held the power to make any who wore the hood utterly invisible.
It was big on her, trailing at least a foot on the ground behind as she walked, but she wore it around her shoulders with pride. Anna had carried a very impressive bag of tricks, and she had passed all of them down to Char, who inherited this gift for tricks and games.
"Excuse me mister, are you a marine?" She smiled up at her next victim. The blonde man with the mushroom like haircut looked down at her, picking at his expensive suit and sneering at the grubby urchin in his way.
"Kid if you don't want to answer to my father you'd better move!" He warned.
"Your daddy? Who's he?" She asked curiously. Of course she knew, but she was playing a game and the biggest part of that was playing as a child, and everyone thinks a child is stupid even when given evidence they are not.
"He's Captain Axe-hand Morgan you brat, so you'd best hop to!" He warned her a second time, preening as the nearby citizens flinched at the casual mention of their nightmare.
"Hop? Okay!" She grinned, jumping in place in front of him and laughing. Helmeppo blinked in confusion for a moment, watching the girl with the bob cut as she hopped in place.
"You're slow aren't you?" He questioned as she continued on for a few minutes, not seeming to grow bored or tired in the least.
"Nu-Uh! I'm super-fast! I could even beat you in a race!" She boasted, letting her legs rest now as she challenged him. She knew she couldn't really beat him, but she had a few tricks up her sleeves. And there was nothing in the rule book that said cheating against marines was wrong.
"Don't make me laugh! A little girl like you? I'll win without even trying!" Char grinned from ear to ear, the prospect of a game was too enticing to resist.
"Well, if I win, how about you buy me some toys?" She egged. At the moment she wasn't talking about stuffed animals or doll houses.
"Ha, typical of a brat like you!" He guffawed.
It was to be a race all the way around the marine base. Some of Helmeppo's personal guards set up a start and finish line while a crowd gathered. Char smiled and dug inside her pouch for the secret to her victory. She dare not draw it from the pouch and reveal it to the audience just yet, but holding it reminded her that what this was is a game and thus something that had rules she had to follow.
Anna's diary, which told all the secrets of her trade. Including but certainly not limited to the secret behind her illusions.
It wasn't a devil fruit, nor some power that few were born with the potential to unleash. It was will and imagination and the childhood innocence of "Playing pretend" that came together. Char took a starter's position beside her opponent in this game of tag and took a deep breath as she drew her hand from her pouch, rubbing fingertips together in the universal sign for money.
A pistol was fired and the runners took off. Helmeppo, being older and with a longer stride, in the lead. Char followed in a sprint as she tried to catch up, coming close to his heels. The hand with the rubbing fingers opened and a small flash of light, hidden by the dust raised by their dash, appeared.
In an instant Char was in front of the older boy and still gaining speed. Helmeppo took an inappropriate moment in which to gape as the ebony haired girl streaked before him, cape fluttering in the breeze produced by her sudden dash.
"I win!" She laughed, throwing up her hands as she crossed the chalk line a full ten seconds before Helmeppo.
"You brat! Guards, get her!" He roared, utterly humiliated to be beaten so easily in front of the inhabitants of his father's city. The guards seized the girl's arm, only for something amazing to happen. His hand phased straight through.
"Ooops." Everyone turned to see Char, her hood having gotten caught by a tree branch and fallen to cancel the clock's power. The illusion Char vanished in a ray of light.
"Seize her!" Helmeppo roared, more infuriated than ever now it was revealed the race was a scam.
Char comically gulped and tried to make a break for it but found the way barred. She could have begun using Dim Mak to incapacitate the marines, but as a small child of ten she often panicked when confronted with more opponents than feasible. Or rather, she panicked when she'd just used a big illusion and was confronted with multiple opponents.
"Tie her to the post! For a month!" Helmeppo ordered. Char growled as a quick search provided the marines with not only Anna's diary, but her bag of tricks and the money she'd pickpocketed whilst invisible during the race. Now even if she somehow managed to escape the post she was crucified to, the only thing she'd have would be the clothes on her back.
Admittedly, with things like the invisibility cloak clothes could go a long way.
A month passed, Char was kept alive only by the daily water allowance given by the marines and the small bits of food a village girl could smuggle her. When the second month passed and Char began to wonder if she'd bring only shame upon her family for never earning a bounty, something different happened.
A green haired man was brought to the post opposite her and tied in much the same manner as she was. On an adult body the method was less successful due to the post being too short, so he was allowed to slouch to conserve energy. Char either held herself boneless or had to switch legs as each began to grow tired.
"Hey, what are you in for?" She greeted her guest. He looked pretty scary but he hadn't struggled at all when the marines had tied him, only taking a minute to fix a black kerchief to his head.
"Killed his pet wolf. You? What did a kid to deserve this?" He asked. Something about her gaunt expression struck something in him, he had to wonder how long she'd been tied there.
"I bet on a game and lost. He said tie me up for a month, but I've been counting. It's been exactly sixty four days since he first tied me here." She informed the scary man. If she were untied she would pull her hood up to hide from his menacing face. She was not untied though, and doubted she'd even have the strength for that much with her body as wasted as it was.
"Why?" Zoro blinked at the strange girl. Why indeed had Helmeppo kept her here? Was it something as simple as being forgotten, and would the same happen to him?
"I have to survive a month of this and then he'll release me, that's our bet." He spoke again when he received no answer. The girl's fatigued head drooped and she shifted in place, well aware of why her bones ached and wishing she could slouch as comfortably as he could.
"That sounds fair enough, but I never play fair with Marines." She hummed in thought. It was one of Anna's rules. Marines couldn't be trusted to keep their words so tricks had to be kept up sleeves for emergencies. A month ago Char would've had enough energy to perform some illusions, but that was all they were and illusions couldn't cut these ropes.
"Just Marines?" He asked, more out of boredom than any real curiosity. Char took it in the spirit it was given though, as a distraction.
"Always Marines." She corrected. "Sometimes with regular people and pirates, but always with marines." That was an important sticking point. It was in the top ten rules. She wished she still had Anna's diary, reciting the rules from memory got hard and she wasn't sure she remembered them all.
"I'm Char by the way, I'm going to play the Ultimate Game. What's your name?" She asked.
"Roronoa Zoro, and I'll be the future Greatest Swordsman in the World." He announced with a smirk, watching for the reaction he'd grown accustomed to.
"Will that be fun for you?" She asked, lifting her head slightly to look him fully in the eye. Her face much more serious than any other children he'd ever met.
"Fun?" He repeated, honestly curious now. He eyed the grubby conditions of her clothes, a faded orange shirt and suspender skirt.
"Fun." She nodded, slowly because her vision swam in a way that really scared her. It had been a week since the girl brought food last. "I believe that if a person is following their dream, one of the reasons is because they think it's fun." Wasn't that what she wanted to do when she left home? Play the Ultimate Game like her sisters?
"I guess I think it's fun." He answered. A silence enveloped them for a few minutes, and in the heat of the day Char dozed, her stomach far past the stage where it would pain her.
Two weeks past, each day holding three or four conversations between Zoro and Char. Sometimes about what was fun, sometimes about fighting, and sometimes about the shapes the clouds made in the sky when she felt strong enough to expend the energy to look up, which Zoro indulged her in. Rika snuck in as often as possible with the things her mother cooked in secret. Some buns or oni giri, but mostly fruit sold in the market. There were long gaps between the meals though, and it never felt like enough.
Three weeks passed, and Char found herself once again imagining what she'd eat if she were free. By now even the tiniest of illusions, changing her eye color, was far beyond her. Her stomach felt like a hollow stone in her gut, never straying far from mind. If she could just have as much of it as she wanted she'd even eat the vegetables her daddy always said were good for her. Why did she throw so many of those away?
"Hey, you two!" She blinked out of her doze and looked questioningly at Zoro. Was Helmeppo and his guards back? She didn't see anyone.
"You're eye sores, get lost!" He was looking up at the wall above her. Char didn't bother trying to twist to see who it was. It obviously wasn't Rika with food, even from here she could hear the panicked cries of some boy. Just some tourists who wanted to get an eyeful, she closed her eyes.
Running footsteps, softer than the marines' boots, and coming from behind her. Char opened her eyes as Rika finally came into view, two oni giri held in her hands. Quickly she stuffed one into Char's mouth before moving to Zoro. Char found the energy to grin as she chewed the food. It was sickly sweet, the rice tasted sugar coated, but she liked sweets anyway and she was too hungry to deny food.
"Get out of here kid or give the rest to Char." Zoro growled. He hadn't eaten a single crumb in three weeks. Char was somewhere between admiring his fortitude and mourning the fact that at this rate he'd starve to death and leave her alone again for however much longer she lasted.
"But I worked really hard to make them, even though it's my first time! And you must be getting really hungry now!" Rika argued, holding it up as though waiting for his mouth to open in invitation.
"Just get out of here kid!" He groaned. It was too late though, Helmeppo's daily visit had started.
"No one likes a bully, Roronoa." He laughed gaily. He was amazed to see the girl alive but at the moment he couldn't care less. She'd been suffering for making him look like an idiot for three months and she'd suffer until she finally died!
"Aw, so you don't have any friends? That must be lonely. I don't have friends either." Char commented. She didn't really understand that he was calling Zoro the bully.
"Gah! I am not a bully! I have tons of friends!" The blonde protested. He took note that her hair seemed to have grown from when they first met. It nearly reached past her shoulder blades.
"Wow, your birthday parties must be awesome!" She exclaimed in surprise. A ton was a big number.
"Of course they are! After all, the son of Captain Morgan could expect no less!" He boasted.
"But more importantly, don't you know that aiding criminals is punishable by death? As said written by Captain Morgan?" He held up the poster being distributed around the town. Rika froze in fear as a life time of her mother's warnings about the captain conditioned the response to make herself appear as small as possible.
"Soldier! Throw her over the wall!" He barked at one of the men in uniform. Char blinked for a minute, her starved mind unable to understand that he meant Rika, not her.
"But-!" He was cut off by Helmeppo grabbing his collar.
"Are you disobeying me? I'll tell my father!" He warned him threateningly.
"…Yes sir." He manually walked to the small girl whimpering on the ground. It broke his heart to look at her and be reminded of his own daughter, but he had to do this for her. "I'm sorry, try to curl up in a ball." He advised, hoping it would negate the damage a bit.
Char gasped as Rika went flying overhead. She waited for the splat but heard nothing, the scream just dwindled away. Her eyes filled with tears as she tried to struggle against the binds. Twisting her head did no good, the post was too thick to look around.
"You jerk! She was just a kid!" She shouted at the blonde man responsible. Her voice was hoarse, unused to reaching such volumes.
"Shut up brat, I can't believe you're still alive!" He remarked, going up and slamming his foot into her stomach. She clenched her teeth shut to keep from throwing up the oni giri she had swallowed. Her body really wasn't in any condition for this punishment.
"Baka! I'm going to play the Ultimate Game, just like my sisters and mama! I'm not going to die just because you say so!" She screeched, trying to hit him with her own stumpy legs. If only they were longer she would've gotten dirty footprints all over his suit!
"A game? Ha, don't make me laugh!" He guffawed, amused by the idiot child. She stuck her tongue out at him for a minute before explaining.
"Not just a game, Hel-baka! The Ultimate Game! To be a pirate!" She smirked, a very unchild-like look.
"A pirate? As if a little girl like you has what it takes!" He sneered, walking away without another word.
"Doesn't matter if I'm little now, someday I won't be anymore." She reminded him. "And when that happens, it won't just be an illusion." She swore.
"Geez Char, can't you do even one thing right?" Jo laughed at her baby sister. At sixteen she was getting ready to head out on her own, the oldest of the sisters. Char, aged five, laughed and replied that she never lost a game.