When she wakes, it's to the sound of the ocean in her ears. There's sand beneath her fingertips, a clear bright blue sky high above her, the warmth of the sun on her skin. Then, the startling realization that she explicitly doesn't remember being anywhere close to the coast hits her like a truck.
Scrambling to push herself up off the ground, she curses quietly when she starts to stumbles after she manages to stand. She takes a few steps forward, fighting against a sudden wave of nausea from getting up too quickly, and almost trips on her tan leather satchel bag. It's a close call; she had barely been able to catch herself before she fell face down into the sand.
Her eyesight is blurry, spots of black dancing in her vision, but she can see a stretch of beach in front of her. Her bleary eyes takes in clean white sand and gentle waves of beautiful cerulean crashing on the shore, along with a dense forested area and a few palm trees behind her. On her left is the remains of a beached, capsized shipwreck with a few missing boards of wood in its hull, dilapidated and falling apart due to both age and the constant ebbing of the waves. There's a few knocked over barrels lying on the sand next to it, just as old and worn as the rest of the sailboat.
She doesn't recognize this place in the slightest and she's starting to feel tears brim up at the corners of her eyes because she doesn't understand what the fuck is going on.
The last place she knows that she was at was smack in the middle of the city, and she can feel the claws of slowly-building hysteria and anxiety settling in besides the overwhelming confusion and fear she's had stuck in her chest since waking because she has absolutely no clue where she is or what happened or who, or what, brought her here and why and she really wants to scream.
Suspicions about being abducted makes her feel sick with paranoia, heart beginning to race as she struggles to breathe from panic, and she places her hand above her chest. Lets her fingers and nail dig into the fabric of her shirt, into her skin while trying to force herself to calm down. Panicking won't help her figure out whatever the fuck is going on, so she can't panic.
After repeating those words to herself over and over like a mantra until she feels her breathing start to ease, she slowly lets her hand drop after she dabs at her eyes to wipe away the moisture in them. She still feels sick and her heart is still hammering in her ears, but it's bearable. It's manageable. She can deal with it until she can either figure out what's going on or find a safe enough place to hide and let herself break down completely.
The first thing she does is do a quick check of her person, trying to figure out if anything's been done to her and what supplies she has on her that her assumed kidnapper hasn't taken from her. Thankfully, besides the whole kidnapping thing and all, she doesn't feel like anything has been done to her. Whoever had taken her hadn't touched her at the very least.
Her dark hair is still tied up in a loose bun, albeit a rather smushed and messy one from her time spent lying on the ground, and her apparel is still the same as she last remembered. She still had her plain, open front and long-sleeved navy knit cardigan and heather gray v-neck on, along with her black jeans and black lace-up combat boots.
There's the familiar weight of her phone in the pockets of her jeans too, and she quickly fumbles to pull it out. She feels like crying or screaming— and, maybe, she even does start shrieking, just a little, judging by how she notices some seagulls burst out of the forest and fly away— when she taps the power button only to see that she doesn't any have service, killing her hopes of being able to call for help.
It's only a split second later, after all her hopes have died a violent and bloody death, that she notices the fact that she somehow has an internet connection. Then, all the frustration and rapidly returning hysteria in her turned into pure confused bafflement. How the fuck could she have fucking Wi-Fi if she doesn't have any signal?
She's starting to feel a headache come on because nothing at all is making any sense, but ultimately she decides that trying to figure out this latest mystery isn't worth pondering over right now when she can use this unexpected boon to her advantage. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth and all that, right?
Immediately powering on her phone and tapping in her passcode to unlock it, she took the chance to open up her navigation app, trying to at least find out where she currently was. When her phone asks for a password to load the app though, she frowned in concerned confusion before closing it. Weird. She tries Twitter next, trying to see if she could ask for help. That doesn't work either though.
She stares down at the "Please enter the password" message on her phone. What the fuck.
After some more fiddling around with her apps, she realizes that the only thing she has access to are a few of her mobile games and the Safari app, with access limited to only a few sites including: Wikipedia, wikiHow, and confusingly enough, just the One Piece category on a manga site. This time, she doesn't even bother to restrain herself, and just plops down on her back and starts screeching.
When all the seagulls within a half-mile radius have flown away in fright and she's managed to calm down a full ten minutes later, she sits up slowly and starts to reach for her bag to see what other bullshit could possibly happen to her this time. She quickly mutters a prayer before unbuckling the latches keeping the top folded over and closed so she can take a quick inventory at her things, hoping that nothing important has been taken or sabotaged.
She sees her change of clothes, a blue three-quarter sleeve baseball raglan tee and a pair of navy high-waisted balloon shorts, still neatly folded in the corner. When she pops open her glasses case, her reading glasses are in perfect condition. Her brown leather journal seems just fine too when she pulls it out to flip through it, all her writing still perfectly intact, and the nice fountain pen she splurged on as a birthday gift for herself is still working beautifully.
Her bag of disposable ball-point pens and the three cheap notebooks she has for jotting down notes aren't missing either. Her earphones and phone charger are still in the inside pocket of her bag. The strange-looking, murky gray apple in her bag with the weird swirls on it doesn't look bruised as well, so she supposes that at the very least her things haven't been touched.
Then it hits her and she freezes, staring at the apple, before vehemently beginning to pray that this is a stress-induced hallucination or something. Because she knows what that fruit is and what it's associated with, and this just can't be happening to her.
Slowly, she closes her bag and lies back down before pushing up one of her sleeves so she can pinch herself hard, hoping that she'll be woken up from this complete and utter nightmare. Unfortunately, it doesn't work and all she gets is pain and a small, nasty pinch bruise in her elbow.
"Fuck," she says loudly, to herself and the clouds leisurely floating above her because there's a fucking Devil Fruit in her bag and the implications that its existence in her presence is giving her has turned her headache into a fully-blown migraine now. "Fuck. How the fuck am I in One Piece of all fucking things?"
It takes an hour of blankly staring up at the sky while trying to come to terms with the newest situation in her life before she finally finds the will to get up again. As comfortable as soaking in the sun while trying not to scream and sob her heart out was, it wasn't going to change her situation into anything better.
She can't exactly get the answer to why she's in the fictional universe of a weekly Japanese manga that's older than she is if she just lies there in the sand and does nothing, after all.
Inactivity doesn't fix problems. So, therefore, the only thing she can do is take action even if her legs feel like lead and she feels like she barely has the energy to move. She tugs her cardigan off and ties it around her waist before she decides to head into the forest to take a look around while the sun was still up in the sky.
If she's lucky, maybe she can find some food and shelter for the night. Maybe, even a way off the island. If she's unlucky, there could be a chance that she'll get mauled by a wild animal or something. She'll take the gamble; she doesn't have anything left.
So she pushes past a bush as she takes her first step into the forest, sliding her bag onto her shoulder. It's an easy walk, thankfully, where all she has to mind are a couple of stray tree branches in her face and a few large roots in the dirt, and she doesn't hear any other noise besides the sounds of her own footsteps.
Which pretty much means that there's no other form of life on this island but her, and that it's completely deserted. Getting off this island is going to be more complicated than she first expected. She still has to figure out where she is too. If she's in one of the Blues, then it'll be good. The Blues are safe enough.
Sure, there'll still be pirates and corrupt Marines with the potential to be worse than pirates, but those, unfortunately, exist everywhere. It's still much better than being dropped somewhere in the Grand Line with no way to defend herself.
Paradise might be iffy though, depending on how close to the Red Line she is, but she might be able to survive. God forbid her being alone in the New World though. She might as well go ahead and off herself early before something or someone comes and gives her a cruel and excruciatingly painful death.
It then occurs to her that another thing she has to do is find where the Strawhats are so she can figure out in the timeline she is. With any luck, she's still pre-time skip. She's really not that keen on suddenly being thrown into the period with a giant powder keg in the middle of the Grand Line, where every single faction with power is keying up for another war.
She's not ready for Marineford 2: Marineford Harder.
The thought of what happened during that arc makes her pause for a moment, feet stopping. She grimaces, remembering all the chaos and the tragic deaths of Whitebeard and Ace, before she forces herself to keep walking. Her leisurely pace speeds up a fraction as she tries to get rid of the sudden uncomfortable feeling she gets.
She can't help but remember the look of absolute anguish on Luffy's face as he held his dying brother in his arms, the broken howl he left out. Yeah, she's definitely not ready for that to happen any time soon. It's doubtful she'd actually be anywhere near Marineford when shit went down, but the fact that she knows exactly what happens there doesn't make her feel any better about it.
Although, speaking of Luffy...
She wonders if she should try and join the Straw Hats. Sure, life as one of them is dangerous beyond belief, judging by the type of shit they get into on a regular basis, but they're strong and they take care of their own. She's already got knowledge about their future opponents too so she'll at least be aware of any threats they'll be facing.
It'd definitely be better than her trying to face this strange world alone with her limited information; not to mention her chances of finding the answers she's looking for about how she's here would be better traveling around with them than it would be if she stayed on some island anyway.
They're good pirates and good people too, which is a plus, and as long as she can get Luffy's interest, it's a guaranteed that he'd let her on. If the Devil Fruit she has in her bag doesn't give her powers that attract his attention, then she's got eight years of piano lessons and five of choir to get his attention as the temporary holder of the musician role for his crew until Brook joins.
It'll work. She'll make it work.
By the time she's finalized her decision to join the Straw Hats, she's managed to find her way to the other side of the island and she stares at what's on this beach.
A sailboat in perfect shape and condition sits on the sand, a small sloop like the one her uncle owned that she used to sail with, and she almost falls on her face at least twice as she sprints over towards it, thanking every deity she can think of for this stroke of good luck. She almost cries when she notices the bag of supplies sitting inside it, giving her water and some dried meat, along with a few cans of foods. More importantly though, there's also a map and a compass.
There's a little note on the side of the map too pointing to an island reading, 'you are here,' so she can find her way to actual civilization. She's not sure who left this here, but she wants to give them a kiss because they deserve it.
Then she notices the letter at the bottom of the bag, and the desire to cry of happiness is immediately replaced with righteous fury after she reads it.
'Good luck, Mikaela,' it reads, with a small encouraging smiley face drawn next to the words. 'You'll need it.'
She screams. She definitely screams for real this time.