A/N: Procrastinating writing an essay, so I've written this weird-ass monstrosity.
It's not a serious go at a self-insert fic or anything (in fact, it's barely a go at all) I was just bored. Think of it what you will lmao.
Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with the One Piece official franchise at all nor am I earning anything from writing this. You know the drill.
It all begins when a child bites into a fruit.
...And promptly blacks out.
"Fuuuu-ckkk"
I wake up, with a pounding migraine, and in a new world.
Wait no, The same world. Just with different memories? No, new memories.
I remember the past seven years of this girl's life- Kora, two parents, small island, fishing; as well as the last 34 years of… someone else's. Adelaide. But I am not-I am not Adelaide, I am Kora.
Kora, with Adelaide's memories, given to me by a magical all-fuckery fruit.
"Ohhhh godddd" I feel myself hyperventilating, and it's getting quite hard to breathe but also-
HolyshitholyshitholyshitholyshitholyshitwhatthefuckwhattheactualeverlovingfUCKI
Darkness.
First thing to do when you have no idea where you are or what's going on around you? Figure out where you are and what's going on around you.
I'm lying on the ground, next to my fucked up devil fruit that just had a chunk taken out of it, and trying not to cry.
Okay.
Oooookaaaayyyy. Breathe in, breathe out Adelaide. Count to ten.
Okay so. Think. I'm in One Piece, no, don't jump to conclusions, I appear to be in a world very much like One Piece let's not destroy the remaining vestiges on my sanity by jumping to conclusions too quickly.
Okay. So. Points to me currently being in a fictional world?
- The swirly devil fruit that tastes like expired asshole that magically unlocked memories of her past life
- I have definitely remember seeing my parents talking on weird-ass snail phones before, which I remember quite clearly from the series
- My elder brother Lyn went off to join some group called the marines a few years ago, and the uniform looks exactly like the One Piece marine corps outfit.
- The fucking seagull that delivers the morning newspaper mama reads every day after breakfast.
Okay soo, it's looking a bit like I'm in One Piece…? But. I don't know that yet. It could just be a freakishly similar alternate universe. Or a really bad dream. A really, really bad dream. Please just be a bad dream.
Alright Adelaide- deep breaths. So, I'm probably in the One Piece world. Okay. What time period? Before or after Luffy has set out? Is it even pirate era yet? Is it way past canon, or way before? I sort through Koras memories for context which give me-
Absolutely nothing.
I sigh. I mean, she is seven. It was a bit absurd to expect her to somehow know even a smidge of the current geopolitical situation of the world from memory, especially with the added-on consciousness of a 34-year-old woman from another world. Going to have to do this from scratch then, I suppose.
Alright, so. I need to find out the year. Time to find a newspaper.
I find myself racing back a familiar path back to my-Koras home. Mama is out the front- hanging things up on a clothesline, and I can't bear to look at her as I race past and barrel through the front door.
Mama always leaves the paper on the kitchen bench after she's done with it for the day, so she can do the crosswords in the afternoon after working. And… aha!
It's there -fortunately- and there's a date and year printed on the top- 1518, which-
I now realise means absolutely nothing to me, as I have not even idea the years in which any of the key events take paper's contents are equally as useful as the date- nothing relating to anything canon I can remember.
This… is probably going to be a lot harder than I thought it would be.
It takes two weeks but through some ultra-sneaky ninja work (asking mama) I manage to figure out when Gol D. Roger died in comparison to now.
He died in the year 1500-
18 years ago. From memory Ace was born around a year and a half(?) after the pirate king died due to his mother needing to hide her pregnancy. So it should be safe to assume that Ace was born around 1501 to 1502 -ish. The year is 1518, so Ace should be… around sixteen?
Luffy was around three years younger than Ace, meaning he should currently be around age thirteen to fourteen. Canon starts when he turns seventeen, so there should be around four years of leeway until the One Piece storyline actually begins.
Hopefully. If I've got my math correct.
That gives me around four to five years before the War at Marineford. That's how much time I have left to secure Lyn's safety, before he inevitably is called to fight and possibly lose his life,
I can do this.
The question is how, when I'm currently in the body of an eight-year-old?
"..."
6 months after eating my devil fruit, I find myself out at sea.
And, okay, maybe a seven-year-old who can't swim ditching her guardian and entering pirate-infested waters isn't quite the smartest idea in the world, but hey, I'm running a bit low on time here.
In the past 6 months, I've tried (rather terribly) to recreate some of the exercises Rayleigh made Luffy do in order to refine his haki during the two-year time skip. All going off my rather shitty memory.
Needless to say, it all ended with me very bruised and defeated, and with no magical haki powers to be found. Figures, especially as I recall someone from the anime saying it took years to train haki, and I don't exactly have the Dark King training me to speed up the process.
Other than my failed attempts at powering up, I've been studying as many cartography and nautical books as I possibly can, shoving as much information in my head as I possibly could. My mother seems both surprised but calm about the change in me, which may have lead to me doubting her sanity.
"Mama." I said, the day before I was ready to set off to sea. "I'm going on a trip for a while, don't expect me back for at least a year."
Instead of a reaction, mama merely smiled and kneeled to pat me on the head as she's always done. "You be careful out there, Kora-chan. Make sure to write to mama, okay?"
Flabbergast and her reaction, I merely nodded, opened mouthed. I was expecting her to get worried or angry and say I wasn't allowed to, but instead she's seeing me off and giving me her blessing.
Mama must have seen my face because she smiled again, even wider this time. "I know I can't stop you, you've got you're papas genes. You be safe out there."
And that was that.
The thing... the thing about having possibly one of the most useless devil fruits around is that I get all of the negatives, with absolutely none of the positives.
Remembering a past life? Pretty nifty until you remember there a people out there who can literally turn into liquid magma.
As I currently am, seven years old, with a weak body and constitution, no haki to speak of, and a useless devil fruit that can't be used offensively OR defensively, I'm absolutely fucked.
I had a lot of questions when I found a small, semi-automatic pistol and rounds of fitting ammo in the bag in my food supplies from home. Unsure if mama put it there(?) or how else it could have gotten in, I was nevertheless grateful by the time my first month at sea had ended.
Turns out I'm a pretty great shot.
I got in the habit of stowing away on trade (and sometimes marine) ships in order to move around. In circumstances where I was close to the ocean, I would often tie a rope around my waist to keep myself secure. When I was in need of food, I would either dine-and-dash or steal from the supply room of the ship I was stowing-away on. Life continued like this for a good three months, and somehow, someway, I got hooked on smoking again.
Even with an entirely new body, seems like I just can't quit.
Six months into my travels, I was a cigarette-smoking, gun-toting eight-year-old on a mission, and nobody was going to stop me.
"Shooting two-handed, you see." I say to a pirate sitting on a crate next to me. "Is actually one of the worst things you could do to yourself." I pause to take a long drag from my cigarette.
"See…" I gesture to the pistol in my hand, cigarette resting precariously between my teeth. "It puts off your aim, because you can't focus on a singular point with both your eyes, which work co-dependently. Other than shitty aim though, you can't really reload, because you've got no hands left."
I quickly pop in the cartridge in and out of the gun to demonstrate. The group of pirates around me nod in understanding.
"Having fun there?" I hear from my side. I whip my head around to see Shanks and Benn Beckham approaching us from the side, Shanks looking just about ready to burst into hysterics and Benn seemingly trying to hide his amusement.
I take in a second to imagine the picture we must make—a group of bloodthirsty pirates crowding around a seven-year-old girl smoking a cigarette as she teaches them the pros and cons of dual gun wielding.
Okay if I was on the other end of this I would probably laugh too.
"I am, thanks." I manage to say. "I just can't believe you actually have members of your crew trying to wield two guns at one time, honestly, how could you ever think that could work."
"Hey!" Yells Lucky Roo from… somewhere. "Yasopp can shoot two guns at once, and his aim is still perfect."
I grimace and I try not to look at Shanks and Benn, who are looking increasingly more and more amused.
"That's not even possible, unless you somehow detached your eyes and had each of them working independently to one another!" I say. "If this guy can really do it then get him here and show me, and I'll prove he can't"
The pirates all burst into laughter, Shanks doubling in on himself.
"Okay, that's it guys." He says, wiping a tear from his eye. "We've had our fun. Time for princess here to have a talk." He grabs me by the back of my shirt and I am dragged into a quieter place on the ship. Only Benn, Lucky Roo and Yasopp follow.
The red-haired captain's expression suddenly turns serious, so quickly it gives me whiplash. I feel my teeth biting into my cigarette, a nervous habit I have still not been able to break over the lifetimes.
"Rumour has it that you have some information about something I may be interested in" He states, looking infinitely more intimidating than the man who was earlier laughing joyfully with his crew.
I swallow. My hands suddenly feel drydrydry and my clasped together hands sweaty. I notice my cigarette has gone out, and Benn kindly lights it up for me again I nod in thanks.
"You shouldn't be smoking at your age, kid." He says kindly.
"It's just my body that's child-like." I counter. "Devil-fruit. Mentally, I'm probably very close in age to you, perhaps even older." I gather myself. "But that's not the point."
Inhale.
"I know everything." I say, this time directly to the red-haired captain. "Or well—close to everything. More than you know, but also less. I-" I hesitate.
Exhale.
"I need to talk to you about that straw hat of yours."
A/N: First chapter is always the worst to write. I should probably work on my essay now.
But... no.