As a warning, this story/compendium will have spoilers, and lots of them. If you're trying to avoid these types of things, you've been warned.
What If: The East Blue heats up earlier?
Looking back on it now, the East Blue was just somewhere for Luffy to get his legs under him, so to speak, and find interesting people to join him. The only time he arguably sweated it out was against Arlong, and the only true threat to him being a Logia in the form of Smoker. Or his own gung-ho style, as also seen when he almost gets executed in Loguetown. It was an interesting time when the Straw Hats never appeared to face overwhelming odds and they arrived just in the nick of time to stop the incoming calamity on the local island/fish-faced restaurant. But Luffy wasn't always a juggernaut, and truth be told these villains aren't complete jokes vis-à-vis everything else in the East Blue; what if these guys had made more waves, long before Luffy was out and about building a crew?
Let's consider the following. Buggy the Clown was quite literally messing around in the East Blue terrorizing small towns. Kuro of a Hundred Plans is spending his time lying low avoiding trouble. Don Krieg is a man with a fleet full of pirates that feels like he's a big fish, albeit in a small pond. Arlong has his proclaimed dreams of breaking out of Conomi Island and establishing an 'Arlong Empire' and is considered a legitimately strong pirate even in terms of the Grand Line.
As we've seen every time these guys make a move, the local towns are completely ill-prepared to deal with ill-intentioned pirates and are for all intents and purposes at their mercy. Outside of Smoker who's stuck as the garrison leader of Loguetown, and Hina, the strongest Marine to be found for miles is Axe-Hand Morgan. Yeah. The East Blue should be in flames, but I suppose the ever-present threat of making too many waves steadies these pirates' hand from going all-out in the pirating. But who's to say that one slight alteration doesn't send one of these pirate crews somewhere…..unfortunate?
It's not hard to believe that either Buggy or Krieg could have stumbled on vulnerable settlements such as Syrup Village or Dawn Island and then proceeding to raid them. Kuro too, before he went into his cover as Klahadore. And finally, Arlong is far and away the greatest threat to anything and everything in the East Blue; if he were to decide that he's gathered enough tax money to launch his 'Arlong Empire', or simply got bored of sitting around it's not hard to imagine him striking terror throughout much of the East Blue, or perhaps even extending his 'taxes' to other island, leaving him the ruler of a criminal empire spanning much of the East Blue. As we've seen, Marines assigned to the East Blue border on corrupt at best and being proper criminals themselves.
Why should any of this matter? Why, it's simple. Any of these pirates could easily disrupt the Straw Hats born or raised in the East Blue and radically alter the early story of One Piece as we know it. It's not hard to imagine a rebellious pre-teen Zoro being overwhelmed as he involves himself in a fight with a pirate crew that are over his head, or a kid Usopp being an unlucky victim of a raiding party. And it's not limited to dead Straw Hats either; Usopp could, for example, grow up to be far more fearless than he ever was as he spends nights harassing the occupying pirates in secret as his only form of revenge, leading to his assuming the role of a small rebel leader on the island. Zoro could have a far more formed disgust towards pirates rather than viewing his early occupation as a pirate hunter as being no more than a means to an end to find strong opponents. With more stolen goods in circulation for Nami to steal, she might find herself in a situation where Arlong cheats her out of her saved 100 million belli and crushes her spirit far sooner without Straw Hats to kick his ass for her.
You may have noticed that I left Luffy out of my examples so far, but there's actually a pretty important distinction to be made here in that he's the one Straw Hat least likely to be affected. He lives in the backwoods of Dawn Island, far from areas worth looting such as Goa Kingdom or Foosha Village. Additionally, Dawn Island is also known to be the home of Garp the Fist, Hero of the Marines. While we know he doesn't visit often, this could easily be enough to sway relatively weaker pirates away from the island as a whole. I suppose he'd certainly be upset to find Foosha burnt to the ground though; perhaps seeing the bar where he first met Shanks being burnt down by so-called 'pirates' alters Luffy's perspective in life? I dunno, it's certainly something that could go somewhere.
Next on the list of least-affected is Nami. As Arlong's golden girl, she is to an extent protected from any excess by the Arlong Pirates in other areas of the East Blue. Additionally, she's a well-practiced thief and escape artist, meaning she'd A) Rarely find herself in a position where she's in trouble and B) More often than not find a way out or have a contingency plan. It's possible that Arlong may take Nami with him when he sails in order to ensure optimal navigation, in which case he may get a first-hand account of Nami's abilities as a thief. This could potentially end Nami's autonomy and result in her being permanently by the side of the Fishman Pirates, if unwillingly.
Sanji is an interesting one in that his early life is already the result of pirate activity interrupting a relatively normal childhood, but Zeff and his crew of Red-Leg pirates are anomalies; they're 'nice' in that they're not out to hurt people, just to take their valuables. You know. Nice. At least they're not 'Kill everybody' Krieg, but certainly worse than the Straw-Hats. Once the Baratie is a thing, Sanji's in my opinion mostly safe from the butterfly effect because the Baratie's reputation for being able to deal with rowdy pirates, plus the added factor of it being a restaurant and not much else; there's not likely to be great stores of gold hidden inside the Baratie….right? A question for another day.
After Sanji it's certainly Zoro who would be least-affected by more prevalent pirate activity in the area, although this isn't saying much, as he's actually very affected by this shift. As a pirate hunter he'll either be in heaven or hell with the altered situation in the East Blue; on one hand he'll have far more powerful opponents to face, but on the other it's far more likely that he meets his match against someone like Buggy who he can't cut, or Arlong who's a Grand Line-tier pirate with a crew of powerful fishmen. My bet is either stronger or dead; who knows, perhaps Johnny and Yosaku step up to the plate and are stronger for it?
Finally, Usopp would be the whipping boy of this new scenario. His island is small, peaceful, isolated, and is known by nearby islands to have a wealthy family living there. More notably Kaya is s-c-r-e-w-e-d. Her manor will be the very first target of any pirates looking for a quick raid, and she could end up in any number of unpleasant scenarios, one of them being dead. One interesting possibility is what would Kuro do if another pirate were to attempt to raid the manor; would he play along as the weak butler, or would he intervene in the desecration of 'his' future wealth? We already touched on possibilities for Usopp a few paragraphs up, so let's go into another interesting question this poses: if two or more crews end up being far more active, could we see small-scale pirate warfare flare up?
Imagining the Kuro Pirates and the Buggy Pirates duking it out over the course of the East Blue stages of One Piece is an interesting thought; while it's unlikely a Luffy as we know him would ever ally with either, it does present an interesting change over the usual repeat of the plot verbatim as Luffy collects crew members all the while having a different fruit/haki/intelligence/evil/some other trope. You'll see with time that I tend to stomp on common tropes in One Piece fanfiction, although I'll also address them in the future and offer my own take on making them more original as what-ifs. I will say that I generally find the stories revolving around haki to be more entertaining than any of the other tropes.
So what are the plot holes with this one? Well, you'd think that the Marines would pump up their military presence to combat the rising amount of pirate activity, but I wouldn't be so sure. We know that they've been having problems containing piracy since the execution of Gol D. Roger, and it was only amplified with the massive casualties caused by the Whitebeard War. If the East Blue heats up, I don't think it's likely to see much more manpower commitment as we've seen before that what the Marines do is what the World Government wants, and what the World Government wants is primarily to secure their power in the form of weapons, knowledge, and powerful individuals, not the safety and happiness of the masses.
On the other hand, Smoker going semi-rogue and abandoning his station at Loguetown becomes more likely as pirate activity rises near him. We know he's got a moral compass and has no problems throwing away orders in favor of doing what he thinks is right; more problems more Smoker is my take on it. He may actually be able to catch and subdue small fry like Buggy and Kuro. Krieg would have an advantage in that he has lots of disposable men to use as decoys, and Arlong is simply powerful and likely knowledgeable about Logia fruits; it's not hard to imagine him escaping into the sea and leaving Smoker fuming when he thinks he's cornered.
What's your take on this, ? Feel free to post your thoughts in any review you leave.