Castaway
It was a quiet day in the East Blue. The ocean was smooth and clear, the sun was shining brightly, the wind was blowing calmly, and the few clouds in the sky were white and fluffy. Due to the nice weather the Strawhat Pirates decided to stop at a small island to resupply before continuing their voyage to the Grand Line.
"Hey Nami? What's this island called?" Luffy asked from his customary perch on the rams-head figurehead of the Going Merry.
"It doesn't have one," Nami replied from the Quarterdeck where she could keep an eye on Sanji and Usopp tying up the rigging while still surveying the island. "It's such a small island, and far enough away from the faster sea lanes, that no one ever bothered settling it or even naming it. The only people who ever show up here are pirates looking for enough food and water to make it to the next island. Like us," she growled and turned a glare on her captain, "since someone decided to have a midnight snack and eat half our rations!"
"Hehehe! Sorry!" Luffy called back to her with a bright and completely remorseless smile.
"Hey!" Zoro shouted from the bow where he was preparing to drop anchor."Didn't you say this island was uninhabited?" He asked, pointing along the beach to a small campfire on the shore.
Nami looked up the beach and stared at the homey little campfire sheltered among some rocks. "Huh? What's that doing there?"
The campsite was small; a stone-lined campfire surrounded by small rocks with a few larger boulders to one side. There was a squat lean-to built between two trees on the beach line. Nearby lay a pile of small logs and thick branches held together by vines in the rough outline of a raft.
"So what do you think? Maybe a shipwreck?" Sanji asked.
Nami shook her head. "Maybe. But there isn't much driftwood or any rope; only branches and vines." She knelt down to examine parts of the raft. "And look here, nothing's been cut. Just torn or broken."
"So whoever it is, they don't even have a knife. Could be a marooning," Zoro said, eyes scanning the trees for potential threats.
"Or just a passenger from a merchant or cruise ship that fell overboard," Sanji countered as he lit a cigarette in the fire. "No way to know unless we run into them."
Nami stood back up from the amateur raft and turned to the others. "Just in case, everyone pair up. If it is a marooning we don't want to get caught by surprise."
Meanwhile behind the largest rock on the far side of the camp a haggard young man in tattered clothes was crouched.
"Oh," he moaned quietly. "Why did it have to be pirates? Why couldn't it have been a nice cruise ship or merchant vessel? Hell, even Marines would have been better than pirates!"
"What's so bad about pirates?"
The young man scoffed. "What isn't? They're murdering, pillaging, raping, slaving, thieving scum. And when they're not doing that, they drink and party until they run out of supplies. And then it's right back to pillaging."
"Not all pirates are like that."
He rolled his eyes at that. "Right. And what would you know about that, crazy voice in my head?"
"I'm not in your head," the voice Replied from what he only now noticed was somewhere above him.
The young man froze. If the voice wasn't one of his hunger and depression induced hallucinations, then that meant...
He slowly turned his head up until he saw a dark haired boy about his age with a massive grin wearing a red vest and straw hat sitting on the rock he was hiding behind. Surrounding him were the heads of three other guys and a girl, all of whom were staring at him like a zoo exhibit. After an awkward moment of silence as they took each other in, he greeted them in as calm and insightful a manner as he could, under the circumstances. In other words, he screamed like a little girl.
"AAAAIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
"So, who are you?" Nami asked, taking in the young man's torn shirt and pants, crooked glasses, mud caked bare feet, and leaf and twig filled curly hair. "And how did you get here?"
"My name's Louis," he introduced, nervously adjusting his glasses. They'd all moved back around his campfire after he'd stopped freaking out and they convinced him they weren't going to kill him. "I fell overboard during a storm two weeks ago and washed up here."
"Wh' 'asn't anyon' come lookin' fo' you?" Luffy asked around the coconut he had found on the beach and started gnawing on.
"I was a stowaway," he hesitantly replied. "No one from the ship will be looking for me, since they didn't even know I was there."
"Why did you stow away?" As Sanji spoke he took the coconut from Luffy and expertly cracked it open on the edge of a rock by the fire before returning it to him. "Even if you couldn't afford the fare, most commercial ships in East Blue would accept an extra deck hand this time of year."
"None of the ships that were willing to take me on were going in my direction." Louis slumped forward in his seat, shading his eyes dramatically with his tangled hair. "After I finished my schooling at home, my parents told me I had to either get a job or join the Marines. But I've never been good at following orders, and none of the jobs back home were interesting in the least. The only thing I've ever been good at is school. So I decided to try and enter a university on Yotsuba Island. I was going to make my way there, then convince them to let me enroll, despite my lack of, well, anything in the way of funds to pay my tuition." When several of them sweatdropped at his plan, he slumped down even further on his rock. "Yeah, I know. It was a stupid plan."
"We'll take you there." Luffy said with his face breaking grin.
"Denied!" Nami screamed as she jumped up to punch Luffy over the head. "Yotsuba Island is all the way back on the North East edge of East Blue!"
"Yeah, so?" Luffy asked petulantly.
"It's the farthest point from the entrance to the Grand line you can get in this ocean! By the time we made it there and back it'd be winter!"
"Oh." Luffy nodded in understanding. He turned to Louis and bowed lowly. "We can't take you to Yotsuba Island. Sorry."
"Ah...that's...um...okay? I guess?" Louis stuttered, his own sweatdrop rolling down his neck at the constant shift in tone. Were these guys really pirates?
Nami sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose in an attempt to ward off a headache. "Look, we'll take you to the next island. You should be able to make your own way to Yotsuba Island from there."
"S-sure," he said with a weak grin. These people might have been the oddest pirates he'd ever heard of, but if a bit of crazy was the price for getting off this glorified sandbar he'd take it. "Thank you for having me."
"Well, now that that's settled, let's get back to resupplying," Sanji said as he stood up. "So Mr. Castaway, where can we scrounge up some grub on this rock?"
"It's Louis," he grumbled, "and there's really not too much. There's a spring that feeds into a lagoon about half a mile in, some coconut palms and pineapples along the shore, with bananas and lemons further in. I don't know enough about wild roots and berries to trust them, but they're scattered throughout."
"Who cares about all that? Where's the meat!" Luffy shouted, making the crew roll their eyes and Louis sweatdrop again.
"Er, as for game, it's all birds and rodents; the largest things I've seen were foxes and some fat owls."
"Che. Not what we were hoping for with this lug," Sanji said pointing to Luffy. "I don't suppose the fishing's any good?"
Louis shrugged. "I was never able to make a fishing rod; couldn't find anything to use as a line. There are some pools that form among the rocks when the tide goes out that are good for gathering shellfish, but I haven't had the energy to reach them for a few days now."
"Huh? Why?" Usopp asked, looking between the rocks Louis was gesturing at and the castaway himself. "They don't look that far out. Can you not swim or something?"
"I can swim just fine. It's just that I've been feeling weak and lethargic the past few days, and it gets worse every time I try going out that far. I get sick and weak until I manage to crawl back up on shore. I don't suppose one of you is the ship's doctor?" Louis finished hopefully.
"Sorry bub, but none of us is a doctor," Sanji took a final drag from his cigarette and toed the butt into the fire. "But, if I had to guess, it's probably just malnutrition brought on by the change in diet and environment. Though that doesn't necessarily rule out some kind of island illness or general food poisoning."
"Food poisoning? I hadn't thought of that," Louis mumbled. After a moment of thought he looked back up at Sanji. "There was this one melon I found on the shore a few days ago. I didn't recognize the type, and it smelled fine, but after taking the first bite..." he shuddered in remembered revulsion. "It was so foul I actually vomited it back up."
"Yeah, that might do it. What did it look like?"
"And how did it taste?" Luffy butted in.
Louis looked up for a moment to collect his thoughts. "Uh, it was the size of a honeydew melon, light purple, and with a wrinkled texture. And Really?" He asked Luffy sarcastically, looking straight at the smiling boy. "I just said, it was so horrible I threw it back up after one bite."
"Yeah, but how did it taste?" the rubber boy pressed carelessly.
"Just tell him. He'll keep bugging you about it until he gets an answer," Nami sighed.
Louis stared around the group that obviously agreed with him about the stupidity of the question but knew better than to hope that their captain would drop the topic. He closed his eyes and thought back to that aborted meal most foul. "It, it tasted like...a rotten apple left to soak in a mug of beer that had been left out in the sun all day."
"Shihishishi, Yeah, that's a Devil Fruit for ya," Luffy laughed casually.
Everyone stopped and stared at Luffy incredulously. Then, as one, reacted.
"EHHHHH!?"
Louis was the first to regain his bearings. "What- but- No! I can't have eaten a Devil Fruit! I-I don't have any weird powers! I can't turn into an animal, or make things float, and I definitely can't turn into fire or water or sand or- or anything!"
"Have you tried?" Luffy asked plainly
"N...no..." Louis denied weakly.
"Well, then how do you know?"
"..." everyone just sat there dumbstruck, unable to respond to that logic.
Sanji lit a new cigarette and let the nicotine wash away the weirdness of the last minute. They had supplies to gather and this wasn't getting them anywhere. "Let's shelve the Devil Fruit talk for now. We need to start gathering supplies." He gestured to Luffy, Zoro, & Usopp with his cigarette. " You guys get the baskets from the ship and gather fruit along the shore. New guy-"
"It's Louis," he responded on reflex, snapping out of his fugue state from Luffy's surprisingly logical argument.
"-Lou; you and I will take some barrels to the spring, and see if there's any herbs and vegetables on the way."
"Right. I'm coming." Louis got up to follow the cook to the ship, but tripped on one of the smaller rocks in his haste. Fortunately Sanji was still close enough that Louis was able to reach out and grab the chef for support. Unfortunately it did no one any good. As soon as he touched Sanji's clothes he felt a jolt run through his entire body. His mind froze for a second as something deep in the core of his being clicked into place. The next thing he knew, he was spitting sand out of his mouth, staring up at the naked blonde's backside as he clutched all of the other mans clothes in one hand.
"...Okay, maybe I did eat a Devil Fruit," He said numbly.
A few hours later, the Going Merry was back at sea with a restocked hold and larder. The Strawhat pirates, plus one castaway, were on their way to the next island.
Louis sat by the forecastle holding the remains of Sanji's clothes from the beach. After a bit of hilarious fumbling around, the chef had hightailed it back to the ship to change his clothes. And then rushed right back to punt Louis for the accidental stripping. Fortunately he didn't punt him too far or hard, or out to sea, and they were all able to get to work collecting supplies. With the ship restocked and underway, Sanji had retreated to the kitchen to start on lunch and told Louis that if he could figure out how to fix the clothes he could keep them. That had been an hour ago and so far Louis had failed to either put the clothes together or take them further apart, unable to regain the feeling he had when he initially tore them off the chef.
"Nami-swan! Lunch is ready!" Louis looked up to see Sanji literally spin out of the kitchen with hearts in his eyes to give the message to the navigator on the poop deck.
"Alright!" she called down, pocketing the shears she was using to trim her tangerine trees.
Like flipping a switch, Sanji was suddenly back to the cool and composed gentleman he usually presented. "Oi, shitheads, foods ready!" he shouted at everyone else in the front of the ship.
"FOOOOD!" Luffy yelled as he sprung off Merry's figurehead towards the galley.
"Oi Luffy, wait! Don't eat everything this time!" Usopp cried as he dashed behind the rubbery captain.
Zoro just grumbled something that sounded like "Shit cook" as he got up from next to the mast where he'd been napping and passed by.
Louis sighed but got up and followed the crew into the galley, still clutching Sanji's destroyed pants in his hand.
He accepted a plate from Sanji as he sat down, but hardly noticed the food as he was still lost in the puzzle of his Devil Fruit powers. He constantly ran his hand over the rend in the pants, trying to grasp whatever feeling it was that let him access his powers in the first place. While the rest of the crew didn't notice his distraction, occupied as they were with eating their own food and protecting their plates from their glutton of a captain, Sanji was quick to spot his dissatisfied customer.
"Something wrong with the food Mr. Castaway?" Sanji asked in his usual belligerent manner when not addressing women or food.
"Huh?" Louis said as he came out of his own thoughts. He scratched his head in embarrassment at getting caught drifting. "Oh, sorry. I tend to get lost in thought when I'm trying to figure out a puzzle; and figuring out this damn Devil Fruit is definitely distracting," he grumbled a bit at the end as he started slipping back into his own thoughts.
"Is it really that hard to figure out?" Usopp asked, losing a potato to Luffy as his attention was split in a third direction. The others suffered similar losses as they turned an ear to follow the conversation.
Louis grunted distractedly. "Yes. If it were a Zoan or Logia fruit I'd only need to find out what animal or element I could turn into, then figure out how to transform and turn back. But I ate some kind of Paramecia, and I can't figure out how to turn it on and off until I figure out what the crap it is," he said, running his hand through his hair in annoyance.
"Well, what do you think it is?" Nami asked, her cattish curiosity drawing her into the discussion. Luffy took the opportunity to abscond with some of her carrots.
"Near as I can tell, based on what I did on the beach, it could be the Part-Part Fruit, Rip-Rip Fruit, Peel-Peel Fruit, Cloth-Cloth Fruit, or even the Strip-Strip Fruit," he huffed exaggeratedly.
Everyone gawked at the diversity of the list and the thought that went into it. Everyone but Luffy, who was gnawing on a slice of Zoro's beef.
"You got all that from taking off Sanji's clothes?" Usopp asked in surprise.
Louis sighed. "Yes. That's what I've been able to narrow it down to, anyway. I could narrow it down even further if I could just get something to happen now."
"Interesting as this is," Sanji interrupted, breathing a puff of smoke to the side of the table, "you should probably start eating before Luffy finishes off your food."
Confused, Louis looked down to see Luffy snatching the last of his beef roast.
"Hey!" he barked in indignation. Almost as if they had a mind of their own the pants in his arms sprung to life and tied up Luffy's hand.
"Ahhhh!" Luffy shouted and started trying to pull the tightly bound garment off his hand with his other hand and teeth.
Usopp started laughing and attacked the Rubber-boy's plate in retaliation for all the food Luffy had stolen from him in the past weeks, further distracting the rubber boy from freeing his hand.
"Well. Cloth-Cloth Fruit it is," Louis said plainly. His immediate puzzle solved, he finally turned his attention to his plate and the mouth watering aromas he had somehow ignored while lost in thought. As soon as the first forkful of food hit his tongue, his eyes and taste buds lit up like stars. "Oh my God, this is delicious~!" he moaned in bliss.
A/N - And that is the opening of my newest story. I blame this stories existence on "This Bites" By Xomniac and the Cross-Brain, which is infinitely better than this story will ever be. Hopefully now that this distraction is out of my way, and I have a working keyboard for my laptop, I can get back to working on my other stories.
Oh look, another distraction! ...I may have a problem.
Ja ne!