"World Nobles... Slaves... Human shops... Against the "purity" of these "upper classes", the villains of the world look positively humane in comparison. It's because the world's in the hands of scum like them that it's all screwed to hell... I mean, we're not the nicest of guys, but at least we're honest about it." - Eustass Kid
Terry wasn't really sure when she noticed that she was collapsed, or when she realised that she could smell the ocean. She lay still for a long time, feeling and smelling only the two disorienting senses. Maybe she had been caught in a bomb blast and this was her coming out of a coma in the hospital?
She wasn't sure of anything, when had she moved and huddled against a wall?
Sitting in the shadows, stinging from insect bites, lips dry and sore from the salty wind, she shivered from the sudden heat flush that passed over her and the rapid loss of control over her muscles. She felt tired and her eyes stung whenever she opened them.
So for days Terry suffered in the shadowy corner, hidden by bins and old boards. It was as if she was trapped inside a neglected doll, watching the busy people pass through the street in front of her, listening to their strange jabbering words, and all the while she could feel her body repairing. Not in the way of feeling better, but more in that she was getting more control and sense back. The slippery glue was being replaced by neat and strong stitches, reattaching her mind and nerves back together.
She could move her arms and once she had tried to stand, but fell back down in a heap, she would make noises but none of them loud enough to her heard or clear enough to be words.
Then, at some time during the glittery night, her body was back again. It took her a while of tripping and leaning heavily, but she was standing and moving, soon walking and rushing towards the only person see could see, dressed in a swanky gown and crying against a wall, obviously wanting to be alone after a day gone wrong.
Well too bad, because my day was worse.
The island was a summer one, always hot, heated and humid, when he glanced at it from their ship's deck it looked flat and over populated. He couldn't see anything besides grey buildings and structures that were over flowing right onto the dirty and wet sand of the beach and sometimes they were perched on stilts riskily sitting over the razor waves.
Yet even when it seemed hostile and unwelcoming, they sailed closer. There captain sure that this was the island he had been told about. It transformed into an ants nest, with what looked like thousands of colourful and busy insects scuttling all over it, in motley long shirts and sun dresses, carrying pots and bags, pulling along children or hauling in shiny scaled fish.
They had all been run off their feet and pushed to their limits over the last few months, with no halt. Every day had held a new pirate crew to fight, new islands to discover, all in the name of building themselves a presence. Their captain had been adamant that they needed to form themselves a name, so that not every visit to the grocery store was strife with fights and they didn't have to leave three behind to guard the ship when they pulled into port. If they did this right, there reputation should soon be enough to make sure no wondering hands unhooked their floating home.
Their flag would mean something on this new sea, which they all agreed on. Their muscles shrieked every morning from the effort they had to exert to achieve this, and all of them were eager to use this holiday to do nothing but sleep and eat. With peaceful days, filling big meals and lengthy hours of nothing but naps and lying under shade to hide from the blistering sun like fat cats.
They drew into the island's only wharf and everything felt grainy and brittle from the salty water, the planks of the dock groaned under their weight and whenever the ship pulled on the rope, ready to collapse from the years of the seaside treatment. It looked a sorry sight and they wondered why their captain had insisted in this place in particular.
They had tried to convince the captain to take them to Paradise Island; it had been voted this year's 'Number One Destination for a Pirate on Holiday'. But he hadn't changed his mind at all, he said someone had suggested this island to him and it sounded perfect for what the crew was looking for. Even though the island was small with a large local population, it had no crowded beaches, queues to get into the bars or other trouble makers trying to pick fights. It seemed the residents spent a lot of their time in the patchwork and propped-up-on-stilts town then they did out on the water and taking time out in the saloons. Some strange work enthusiasm these people had, but every island to its own, every native culture had its quirks.
The island was in fact as flat as it looked- but not nearly as crowded. They were all amazed to actually witness how none of its inhabitants spent much of their time fishing and walking along the beaches, it was just something that locals had with their island, relaxation only in the spring months. Right now it was coming out of summer into autumn. All of the tide pools and shallow beaches were deserted. Sand bars stretched their long fingers out into the mangrove ridden sea and not a sole could be seen when you looked away from the balancing, kilometre long metropolises.
It was obvious now that the path they had sailed into the island on had been dug purposefully, there was no such thing as water deeper than five meters here. Many shabby and thin wharfs had been nailed together over the tidal beaches and webbed out over the clear water for it to just look like they reached for the horizon when you gazed out from the beach. Wayward canoes were resting along the banks or tethered man-less amongst the shore growing trees. They spent their time on the island in a lethargic haze.
Glass thin fishing lines barely broke the smooth surface of the sea, the mangroves which were thick and ringed around the island sheltered it from the waves, making the water on the beaches calm. Lightweight hooks floated down through the clear and cool water, halfway if you wanted a juicy silver fish or resting on the sand bed if you felt like some sweet crab flesh. Slowly filling the bucket at your side over the day's long and pregnant hours, until the sun started to weep orange, bleed the sky red and cry pink.
They would stroll back over the elevated paths from out on the sea to the shore, shirtless, pants rolled up to the knees and a full bucket swaying by their side held by a recently sun kissed hand. They would meet other members along the way to the shore or none at all.
They ate dinner at one of the many restaurants that sat along the beach's edge; the island's restaurants specialised in having their customers provide their food, their day's catches cooked for them, served with a slice of lemon and glass of water. It was cheaper to dine and tasted better when this was the fish that I caught over near these ragged rocks, I remember how I had to get into the water because I got the line caught around them.
The On Air Pirates were a rowdy crew, hectic in the way they talked and loud in the way they walked, but the tranquil and serene island made them experience hours of silence were they sat with the only through on their minds being based around the warmth of the sun on their arms and the tickle of sand against their skin.
They spent the week dozing alone, legs dangling over the wharf edges or stretched out in a drifting canoe, sleeping in the dabbled shade from above.
At the end of every day they gathered in the bars and eateries together and enjoyed the brief holiday that the Captain had allocated them for being such a blameless crew.
Because they had just marked themselves out in the New World.
On the fourth day, when they had finished recuperating and felt like doing more than slumbering all day, two went on a walk through the shanty like town, the captain skipped off to find an audience and the rest went spear fishing out under the rocks and behind the great submerged ship wreck.
"Have you read the newspaper at all?"
"Nah,"
"Apparently the Marines are reviewing their entire Grand Line operations, after how many times the Luffy kid slipped through their fingers."
"They say that the admirals were so pissed off that they hunted him down and sliced his head clean off."
"No, not Straw Hat, not with Rayleigh and Jimbe looked after him."
"That's just what I heard."
"Hey."
"Hmm?"
"Do you feel like we're being followed?"
"You too? It's kind of annoying."
He turned suddenly to try and see who it could be, and his eyes meet the person immediately. It was a filthy looking girl who was walking unsteadily and looking around uneasy, she was making no attempt at discretion, following just meters behind them, her bare feet tapping lightly against the planked path as she moved.
"Captain, we have someone pleading for our help."
The captain had been busy dancing around and playing a song, the bar's customers and tenders were thundering from all the clapping and cheering, quickly changing to a loud echo as the occupants let out sounds of final farewelling applause when their entertained creased his entertainment.
"Who?" The long armed captain strained to be herd over the noise "I had suppose people would start asking for favours once we became known, but not this soon. What is it, a town that needs help to over throw their evil ruler?"
The Captain had always had an over active imagination to how things would be in their pirate life. When he was announced as a supernova he had pranced around the ship—This is it boys! We will be up to our necks in alliances and requests! That never happened; instead they got bounty hunters and marine interest where ever they went. Which ruined their parties, something which the On Air Pirates were very proud of hosting.
"More like a damsel in distress."
"Those really exist? Bring her right here, this is a childhood dream you know!"
He was always in the good mood the captain, but Taiko worried how well that mood would hold after he meet the girl.
"Yeah, but we seem to have a language problem."
The grubby girl walked in, her head held low and her eyes peeking out from her knotted hair. She didn't have a thin frame or was even that short, but standing amongst some of his thick set crew members she looked inconsiderable.
Then she broke into strings of gabble, none of it comprehensible.
"Can she understand us?"
"No"
The captain hummed in thought, bemused by the urchin.
"Why did you assume she was asking for our help?"
"Well, some of the stuff we understood, like she kept saying Monkey D. Luffy, Grand line and thank you all the time. Over and over again until we just decided to take her to you."
"Yeah, you said you knew over three hundred languages." The crew member beside the speaker rolled his eyes and gave the captain a pointed look.
"Oh...well, yes I do, but this girl is speaking on so foreign that I cannot recognise a word."
"That lost is she?"
"Yes."
The girl started to speak again, but this time, even though it was thick with an accent and pronounced at parts wrong, she was saying Monkey D. Luffy over and over again. She started tearing up and it made everyone watching in the bar uncomfortable and shifty.
"So, what does this mean about anything?"
The girl suddenly got on her knees; she looked uncomfortable and unfamiliar with the gesture as she knelt on the floor, saying please over and over again like she had with straw hat's name. The please was even worse, thick and without the usual flow that they were used to hearing it said in.
He didn't like to turn people away; a party never turns away, and especially sickly looking girls who were in front of him crying their hearts out.
"Fine, we will…" What was it that she needed? "Take her to straw hat, or whatever she needs."
He winked at his crew so they would get his drift, all understanding because there was no way they would accept someone like her onto their ship. They were navigating the most dangerous seas in the world and weak links couldn't be tolerated. A rule they had about crew members was if someone needed to look after you then you weren't worth looking after.
Then she was looking up at him, in reacting to when he said "straw hat", she started repeating that too. Her strange appearance fully hitting him just now as he got to see her without that dishevelled hair in her face. She was not like anyone he had ever seen before, with a funny nose and a face completely marred with freckles. Her eyes were wide and her face was in a shape that he had ever imagined faces to come in.
Unusual appearances were something people on the high seas consider a daily occurrence, fish folk, giants, even his own long armed tribe. Strange always suggesting a potential to be interesting and powerful. There was something…detailed about this girl.
All mysterious foreigners ended up being powerful; it was a law or something.
"I think I know what has happened here." He nodded around as the two present members of the six man crew. "She must have been slave marketed because she is some sort of royalty or has some secrete power. This chick is diffidently coming with us, we can teach her to talk and then she will be so grateful of our help that she gives us our own island."
"Can't we just take over an island?"
"Gives us enough money to by an island then."
"That sounds good"
"I like the sounds of that"
"She can be a deck hand"
"Nah, looks to delicate"
"An assistant to Betsu then"
"Yeah, then he can make yummier food and stop complaining about having no help."
Numerous cries went up at this, all in all it seemed like this was turning into a jackpot.
Their new crew member must have some monster in her blood, she just looked so outlandish. He was even more willing to take her on now, they had all convinced themselves she came with abilities that she didn't actually have.