Hey all! It's been quite a while since I started this story, around seven months, and I was reading what I'd written from the beginning and just said, "yuck." So I've decided to redo the first chapter. Here it is, the new and improved, Chapter 1!

Disclaimer: I don't own One Piece. If I did I would have been working on it before I was born.

Chapter 1

"Wake up! Wake up!" That was what I normally woke up to. My mother shouting at me.

I groaned And rolled over to look at the clock on my bedside table.

8:00.

I pulled myself out of bed, stretched, then made my way over to my closet door and looked at the calendar. Monday the first. First day of school.

I was so excited. Normally, you wouldn't expect a five year old to be excited about their first day of school, but believe me, I had my reasons.

I pulled off my pink pajamas, and started rummaging through my closet for something to wear. It was a tough decision, but I finally decided on my blue shirt with a gear design, black shorts, and lace-up sandals. Then I grabbed my blue plastic hairbrush and attacked my mop of reddish brown hair, wincing whenever I hit a tangle. That happened a lot.

All done! I raced down the stairs for breakfast.

I wasn't expecting anything less, but I still didn't duck in time when I entered the kitchen. A high heeled shoe glanced across my forehead. "Oww!" I whined.

"You should have been up fifteen minutes ago!" came a shrill voice.

My mom. The most awful woman to hit parenthood. She usually wore a black dress, and black high heels (I swear, she has about a million of those). Her brown hair was tied back into a tight ponytail behind. Her blue eyes were like a hawk's. Sharp and scary. She might have been pretty, if it weren't for the awful smell of beer and her short fuse. Worst mother ever.

"Sorry, mom..." I said, making a move to sit down. She smacked me upside the head and I flew across the kitchen to the door. "You need to get a move on!" she hollered. "you and your brother both! I don't want any calls from the school saying you're late!"

As if on cue, my brother Keith ran in from the family room. He has hair like mine, as well as my reddish brown eyes - okay, I know you don't see that often, but seriously! That's what colour my eyes are! - and Mom's proud expression. He was seven, two years older than me, and he was the best friend I had in the whole world.

He took my hand (his is waaay bigger than mine) and said, "We're going now, Mommy! C'mon, Koe!" We both dodged another pair of shoes and shut the door behind us.

"Waah!" I cried, wiping my eyes. "It hurts!"

"Koe, you need to be more careful!" Keith said, dabbing my forehead with his makeshift rag, an old sock. The shoe Mom had thrown at me had made a decent sized cut. "Just wait for another few hours." he said, digging through his backpack. He fished out a pack of band-aids and stuck one on my cut.

I winced when he did that. The cut really stung.

"How long is a few hours?" I asked him, giving him the sad eyes.

"Too long." he said darkly. His expression almost scared me. he always looked so kind, but at that moment, he looked tired, and really mad. "We can run away as soon as school ends. We can't run until then, because Mom would get a call from the school if we missed class." He stopped for a moment to flash me uh is usual smile. "We don't want the cops after us this time, after all."

I grinned. My brother is so smart. He had come up with the idea that we could run away on my first day of school. We couldn't stand our mom's constant abuse. "C'mon." he said. "We'll be late for school."

We passed a market on our way. The market is usually a whole bunch of pretty tents, and colourful blankets spread out on the were vendors selling meat, fruit, fresh pastries, you name it.

The smell made my stomach rumble and ache.

I tugged at Keith's sleeve. "Keith, I'm hungry..." I said. "I didn't eat any breakfast."

"Oh, you poor dears." someone said, making us both jump.

Standing behind a fruit stand was a really old lady. She wore her grey hair in a tight bun at the back of her head, a purple mumu, and grey socks. Er skin made me think of a big, pink raisin. Her eyes were grey as the ocean. "Why would you not eat breakfast, dearie? Why not ask your mother?"

"Our mom's mean." I said. "We're running away."

Keith pinched mY nose. "Don't tell grown-ups about that." he scolded.

"Oh, dear." the old lady said. "How is your mother mean?"

"She gave me this." I said, pointing to the scratch on my forehead.

The old lady's eyebrows furrowed so much she almost had a unibrow. "Oh, that's just horrible." she said. "What are you planning to do?"

My face lit up. "We'll run away and become pirates!" I shouted.

Keith gave me an odd look. He looks really funny when he does that. His eyebrow raises until it disappears in his long hair, and his forehead wrinkles a bit. "Why pirates?" he asked.

"Pirates live a life of ADVENTURE!"

There was a long pause.

Keith looked at me like I had lobsters crawling out my ears. "Koe, we don't need to be pirates to live a life of adventure, you know." he said.

I stuck out my lower lip. "No! We need to be pirates! Pirates are awesome! They sail the seas, and they sing, and they hunt for buried treasure! And they sing!"

Keith sighed. "You already said that they sing." he said. "And that's still not a very good reason. We can be explorers and do the same thing."

The old lady smiled. "Such a fine ambition. Here."

She held up a pair of fruits. One was a purple pear, the other was a blue watermelon. Neither were smaller than a basketball, and both of them had pale grey swirls. "I can't let two fine pirates like yourselves go on an adventure on an empty stomach."

Keith looked at the fruits suspiciously, but I eagerly took the fruits from the old lady. "Thanks weird old lady!"

Keith smacked me lightly on the head. "Koe, that's rude!" he said.

The old lady didn't seem to mind, though.

"Thank-you ma'am." he grabbed my hand again, covering my fingers with his. "C'mon, Koe."

I turned and called, "Thanks!"

As we walked down the street, the old lady called, "Enjoy your adventures, young ones!"

I looked at the two fruits. something about them was definitely weird, but I thought I could feel something coming from them. I dunno. All I knew was, I was really hungry.

"Since she gave them to us for free, we should eat them." Keith said.

I perked up. "Give me the blue one!" I said. I liked it because it was the same colour as the gear on my shirt. A kind of metallic blue. I

Keith took the purple one and took a bite."This tastes horrible." he said, covering his mouth. "Hey, Koe, don't eat that. I don't think these are edible."

I ignored him and took a bite of my watermelon. I nearly gagged. It tasted worse than anything I'd ever had in my life! It tasted like old socks wrapped in... Something even more gross than that!

I dropped the fruit on the sidewalk. "yuck." I said.

I kept walking. Finally, I came to a fork in the road that I didn't know. I turned. "Keith?" I asked. "What way to the school? ... Keith?"

My brother wasn't behind me. He had just vanished into thin air. I ran back in the direction I came, panic making everything around me disappear. "Keith!?" I screamed.

That's when it hit me. I got really dizzy, and I felt like I was going to throw up. I staggered along. Everything around me went so fuzzy, I couldn't tell what was going on.

I didn't even realise I was tumbling out into the middle of the road.

The last thing I remembered was a honk, a red semi, a crash, a rushing noise, and everything going black.

Well, that was the new and (hopefully) improved chapter 1! I really had to make the language a lot simpler. Honestly, I had Koe say things like "vertigo" and "impossibly old". I don't know any five-year-old who does that. Clever me... Anywho, I hope you liked it! I might re-edit chapters 2, 3, and 4 as well. I probably will, since I don't have much time to write a new chapter right now, and I, being the semi-perfectionist that I am.

Anywho, hope you enjoyed!