Marie D. Suesse And The Mystery New Pirate Age!
A Deconstruction, served with a side of Lemony Narrator:
Chapter 2: Loses Her Parents
In stories where girls fall from the real world into fictional worlds, the most common scenario is for them to fall into a dangerous scenario and be rescued by someone from the fictional world, thus providing a perfect excuse to tag along with the locals. The fact that 90% of these rescues end up being romances should tell you something about the chances of this not happening in this instance.
Which is to say, it did happen actually. Just not quite that way to our main protagonist Mar.
Now when we last left Mar, she was staring out of her window at a sea king which was probably wondering what delicious morsel was about to come crawling out of the sinking house. Her mother, not being exposed to the wonderful imagination of some japanese manga-ka, was screaming in a panic, while her father was yelling something about Loch Ness monsters.
Which is a stupid thing to do, because said Loch Ness monster-like thing will know you are alive, fleshy and probably quite edible.
Fortunately, sea-kings are deliciously edible too. A group of hungry pirates promptly showed up and killed the creature in about five seconds flat.
"Pirates!" exclaimed her father, who had been prepping his baseball bat. "How did they get here all the way from Somalia?"
(According to the author, Mar's father was being rather presumptuous. In actuality, there are other areas afflicted with modern piracy too, the other area most famous after the Coast of Somalia being the Straits of Malacca.)
Anyway, unfortunately for Mar, these pirates were NOT good pirates. That is, the fictional type of pirates that dress up and go around having adventures and not do any of the real piratey things like raze, pillage and capture slaves. This lot DID do those piratey duties, and they even know to do them the correct order.
Now Mar had always told herself that she was brave and special. She'd trained in the martials arts and was a blue belt in karate. She'd fight to show that even as a girl, she was strong enough a fighter to be taken seriously.
But after hearing that hyena-like laugh and witnessing her father dropping like a rock after being taken out by a man who seemed vaguely familiar, she ended up hiding under the bed, and praying they wouldn't find her. She also had the privilege of listening in terror as the pirates dragged her parents off.
They didn't find her, not because her hiding place was really any good, but the house had sunk so much into the ocean by that time that they deemed it a hazard to stay in there, and sailed off, leaving her alone.
For some reason, people like writing about abused heroines with tragic childhoods. Their favourite trauma (after the rather tasteless abuse and rape backstory) is probably being orphaned in some horrific incident. It is often used to inspire sympathy. It should be noted that few of them ever do it justice. Writers using it as a sympathy card for them to 'like' a character is akin to causing the death of someone's parents and taking up a collection on behalf of that someone as they've been orphaned.
Anyway, back to our heroine. Now Mar believed that she never cared for her parents. She despised them for constantly arguing and yet pretending everything was all right in her presence. She had been counting the days until she could turn eighteen and leave home.
And yet now, when she was alone, clinging on to the flotsam that had survived her sunken house, she would have given almost anything to have them back. Her beautiful but admittedly naggy mother, who always sighed in disappointment at her for not living up to her potential. Her workaholic father who never spent time home if he could help it. As parents, they were horrible at their job, but they were there.
Four hours later, hunger and exposure got upgraded into the most prevalent thought in her mind, right behind the eerie thought of what exactly was down there in the black-blue depths. Sharks? Sea-Kings? Would any of them notice her and come eat her, wrinkly fingers and all?
It was at this point that something rather odd happened.
Something small and yellowish was floating in the distance. The way the current carried it, it seemed to be floating towards her. When it came closer she recognised it, and Mar's jaw dropped. Again.
It was THE Straw Hat.
If you are reading this and do not know which straw hat I mean, then you would probably be a hopeless case sitting in the wrong place reading the wrong story from the wrong fandom and heaven knows how you even got as far as the second chapter. But of course you know which straw hat I mean. The question you should be asking yourself, and I have no doubt you are asking yourself, is what is that hat doing floating in the middle of the ocean with no owner in sight?
You might be even more surprised to hear that this was not the only thing Mar was wondering (of course she recognised it for what it was). But as it came closer and she could see what was in it, her attention was shifting more and more to the object sitting nestled in the floating, upturned hat.
It was a fruit. And when I say 'fruit' of course all you savvy readers will immediately know that I wouldn't even bother mentioning this detail if it was just your average Granny Smith apple or Cavendish banana being floated about in that hat turned impromptu-fruit-basket. Of course it's a devil fruit. In fact, this was a devil fruit that looked like a chilli pepper, but with swirly lines all over.
Now most people, on being lucky enough to find a devil fruit, will probably hope against all hope that fruit is a Logia fruit. I'm not sure what it is with the Logia fixation. Maybe it's a kind of snobbery and belief that the more rare a fruit, the better it is. Personally, I find it's more about the user's skill, and that Logias are overrated while Paramecias are undervalue despite being much more versatile, but hey, just because I'm the narrator doesn't mean I'm not entitled to some bias, here.
Whatever the case is, everyone who finds a fruit will probably hope that they end up with an absurdly overpowered logia fruit, hopefully something suspiciously similar to something a famous person already has, say ice or the power to turn into diamonds or sakura blossoms and so on and so forth.
Anyway, back to the story... now on recognising the fruit, Mar did what most people in her situation would have done: she grabbed the famous hat, jammed it on her head, and ate the fruit.
She did not quite get a Logia devil fruit, however. Almost, but not quite. She was one letter off.
She soon realized, as she swallowed the horrible tasting flesh that burned on contact with her skin, that she had eaten the Logic-Logic fruit. (In case you were wondering, it's a Paramecia. Yes I know some people consider logic an element, and some people think logic is elementary, but the author says it's a Paramecia, so it's a Paramecia, ok?)
Right after she ate the fruit, she was overcome with a searing pain that quickly ebbed away into a dull headache. Fortunately, Mar had had the foresight to tie herself to the conveniently floating flotsam. She had also made sure she was less than half-submerged before she ate the devil-fruit and became powerless in the water.
There are advantages to reading a lot of manga when you get dropped into the world of one, you see.
By good fortune, that also meant her new-found devil-fruit powers could work. And lo and behold, more strange things started happening as she came to terms with the change the accursed fruit had done to her.
One: The water below her began bubbling.
Two: The air-tight plastic chest that she had been using as a floatation device was rising out of the water, because the deck of a ship was appearing beneath her.
Three: She was lifted out of the water and found herself on the bridge of a perfectly functional ship that had inexplicably risen out of the depths of the ocean.
I say 'inexplicably', but actually, it is quite explainable, and drawing upon Mar's Logic-Logic fruit powers, let me proceed to outline how this apparent deus ex machina came about.
Mar's house, on sinking to the bottom of the ocean, had disturbed a coated ship that had been lying hidden there. Why exactly it should be coated and anchored to the bottom of the ocean at that particular point is a mystery I won't go into now, but the matter of fact is the sinking house had severed the line of the anchor. Without the additional weight of the anchor, something called buoyancy took over and whoops, up goes the ship!
And that was how Mar found herself a ship.
But it wasn't just any ship. As she got to her feet, she realized the deck was made out of dirt that had turned into mud, and was covered with the mushy remains of what might have been grass.
There was a very familiar-looking lion figurehead at the prow. It was covered in leftover silt, but Mar could see that it had been painted with bright colours, much like the rest of the ship. Most tellingly of all was the symbol on the ship's main sail and flag. As Mar recognised it, the traumatised and displaced girl had to pinch herself it make sure that she wasn't dreaming.
She wasn't. She blinked hard and rubbed her eyes before looking again anyway.
It was all too surreal. Despite the faded colours of the dye, there was no doubt that both sail and standard bore the symbol of the man who would be the Pirate King.
"It's the Thousand Sunny!" Mar said aloud in amazement. "I'm on the Thousand Sunny!"
End of Chapter 2
