Butterfly effect

I would've loved to fault my brother for everything that happened to us in a time span I wasn't really sure about. We've lost our sense of time; we've lost our eyesight for a moment; our sense of balance; our sense of orientation. This was by far worse than any training I had absolved in the boot camp of the U.S. Marine Corps, I thought we were going to die the moment I turned blind for who knew how long. But it felt painfully long, literally.

I couldn't fault him though. I had asked and he didn't know better. There was a problem and we needed a solution, no time to nag.

After being thrown through a load of pressure, I crashed into water. While I felt nauseous, my senses were still missing as it was happening and rebuilt only slowly. I started panicking slightly as my air supply was capped while I had poor control about my environment. With all the left strength I could gather, I pushed myself up to the surface and ended with a loud inhalation. Like when you look through a steamy window that took some time to get clear, my sight was still blurred as I hit the air again.

As my first thought had been surviving, my next was my brother. My body tilted within few seconds probably a dozen of times while I was yelling, "Zach?!" I thought I had lost him during the spin, but then heard his voice calling back my name in equal panic. Trying to follow the direction of it, a weak silhouette inbetween the waves appeared a few meters away from me. I didn't think much about it and swam towards the person, which fortunately was indeed my brother.

"Th-there's an island I think!' he told me and pointed over to something that seemed to be the shore.

It was only a guess, because our view was still disturbed so that it were only color speckles we could figure. According to my assumption, the island lay several yards away, perhaps around 15. I grabbed my brothers exhausted complexion, who always had been a lousy swimmer, and pulled him with me. Within the Marine Corps, I learned to swim long routes without breaks and my stamina could usually carry me at least 25 yards. Without my full capacity, those 15 plus my brother, it pretty much felt like 25. Moving closer to that big spot between water and sky (boy, was that the ocean?), we bumped into a lot of random stuff that floated in the big pool we were in. Plastic cups from our home; those instant noodle cups Zach piled in his lab; unreasonable amount of plastic bags; plastic, plastic, plastic; so much polluting trash! But well, all the other items that got sucked in with us were probably on their way down to the seabed (oh god yes, it's the freaking ocean!).

Wet from head to toe, clothes soaked to the bones, eyes and nostrils burning; we landed on our fours and panted heavily against the dirt while the water dripped down from all corners of our bodies. We felt the sun was hitting our backs, quite warm therefore that it was actually just the beginning of spring. Anyway, I hated wet clothes the most during my training so that I lifted my torso and unbuttoned my jacket right away. And I hated those buttons when my fingers were trembling; couldn't they use zippers for the uniforms instead?

As I threw my jacket to ground and sat in my olive green T-shirt, my eyes wandered up and I froze for the moment when they allowed me almost clear vision again. Zach was still coughing and gasping next to me until he pushed up as well, glaring in the direction as I did with the same frozen expression.

We slowly tilted our faces to each other, exchanging blank stares that got interrupted seconds later with awkward laughter.

"Ohhh, I see, ya invention brought us to One Piece," I said humorously and nodded many times.

He nodded back with the same attitude, "oh, sure, totally! That's the world of One Piece!"

"So funny, ha-ha!"

"You nail it, ha-ha-HA...!"

I turned around and untied my boots, nuding my feet with a dull smile.

"What are you doing?" my brother asked me as he watched me moving in slow place, slowly lying down on my side like an embryo.

"Letting my stuff dry in the sun and sleep," I replied, perplexed and in the process of digesting the situation. This was surely a dream I was too tired to explore now. Tomorrow would've been okay, but today I was at the limit of my powers.

I heard him also getting off his shoes and socks behind my back. "Zoey...? I know you think this is just a dream..."

"Yes."

"But I think I gotta better explanation..."

I grinned sarcastically and made a weary turn on my back with all my limbs spread, staring at him. "Not a dream?"

"Unlikely... it's- OH MY GOD!" He ran back to the water, staring down to the paper pieces that floated along shore and beyond. "M-my notes! They are all gone! NO!"

"At least we're alive," I told him and sat on my buttocks.

On his knees, he moved up to me extremely fast (hell, where the energy all of a sudden?), and shook me in his frustration. "NO! ZOEY! THIS IS WORK OF SO MANY YEARS, DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT WAS TO COLLECT THOSE?! IT'S GONE! GONE! I'M NOTHING ANYMORE, I'M MEANINGLESS TO THE WORLD NOW! I-"

"MR. ZACHARY LLOYD! GET A HOLD OF YOURSELF!" I cut him off. He startled and twitched back, glaring at me with big eyes. "I freaking fracking swam 15 yards with ya in my grasp, pulled ya up that damn island, had less than five hours sleep, I'm super hungry, super thirsty, had no chance to see mum and dad, and now I have to give myself ya damn pussy whining!"

"M-"

I grabbed his collar. "Are you a man or a sissy?!"

"A man...! A man, Zoey!" he replied. "Let go of me!"

Doing as he wished, I sighed and fell down on my back again to stare at the top of this island. We weren't just on any island of the One Piece universe, it was a quite cute yet awful island, extremely significant to the story. The trees we relaxed on were abnormally high mamooth trees, it was frightening and beautiful to the same when you stood underneath those. And those weird soap bubbles that lifted from the bottom, they looked so nice, I wanted to climb into one.

Bingo. You know where we were.

"Either we're here during pre-time skip, within the time skip, or post-time skip," Zach said.

"Or far before or after the adventure began," I added.

Pensively, he held his chin. "Right. If this is an alternative universe, it means we possibly can be here at any time, apart from the manga..."

"I'm tired Zach," I said idly and closed my eyes. "Wake me up when my clothes are dry."

"Huhh, you don't wanna explore this world?" he asked totally in wonder.

"Not when I'm tired and have to walk around with wet clothes, see ya."

And I was pretty sure it hadn't taken much time for me to doze off on one of those big mossy roots. On Sabaody Archipelago.

###

How long I had been sleeping was uncertain, but my clothes were definitely dry that it was relieving to chill in my baggies again. In the moment I was awake, but decided to keep my eyes relaxed for a little, I wondered if that all hadn't been just a dream. Perhaps I was still in the train on my way home, or perhaps I was sleeping in my bed at our military base. But it smelled salty, so it was also possibly for me to have fallen asleep on deck of one of our ships with homesickness.

My eyelids opened and the first thing I saw was still the roof of the weird One Piece trees. So no, it was probably not a dream. Casually, I pushed my torso up with a yawn, but halted instantly as I locked eyes with a weird sun kissed man, rummaging the trousers of my brother, which he didn't wear anymore.

Wow, that was awkward. He suddenly pulled a knife and moved quietly closer to me while I sat there perplexed and stared up at him. Of course someone would try to mug us when we're exposing our lifeless bodies on the ground! Stupid us!

He squatted down in front of me with a grin, the knife pointed into my direction. "Awake, lil' lady? Don't do anything stupid and I'll spare cha."

In a quarter of a second, I hit his arm away and disarmed him easily, earning confusion from his side. He fell on his butt and I got up with his knife in my hand, glancing down at him. "Imma freaking U.S. Marine, don't screw with me!"

The guy didn't seem to be a pirate or any bandit as he was intimidated by counter attacks immediately. I guess he was just a thug who randomly thought he could take advantage on us. As I stepped closer to him, he stumbled backwards and raised on his feet, running away.

My gaze shifted down to Zach, who was sleeping only in his boxers on the ground. I fell on my knees next to him and shook him awake. "Zach! Wake up! I just chased a One Piece thug away!" His eyes slowly opened, looking well-rested while I shot him my worries, "he was rummaging your clothes, and oh gawd, such a pervert, he even stripped you almost naked! Did he touch you? Does it hurt? A-"

"Zoey, Zoey...! I'm alright," he cut my words.

My eyes grew perplexed and I darted my hands to his nude body to remark, "you, got, stripped."

"Ah no, I put my clothes off on my own to let them dry better," was his casual explanation and we started an awkward moment of silent stares, but then subtle laughter again.

"Oh, okay, sorry, then, of course, it's logical that you're naked."

"Yeah, uhm, happens, nothing to be sorry, I do that uhm... sometimes."

I grinned sarcastically at him with a nod, still feeling quite weird about his statement. "Great!"

He got up and dressed again while I returned to my socks and boots, knotting my jacket around my hips. "Okay, I'm hungry," said I and touched my grumbling stomach.

"You know we got no money," he responded and disappointed me deeply. Right, money... Berries... how could I forget that. But we wouldn't have cash anyway, since my backpack with my phone, my purse and all the other important stuff to me, probably just drowned to the bottom of the sea.

"Money!" I said and stared concentrated into space. "Money!"

Zach's face distorted to skepticism. "What are you doing?"

"Money!" I repeated. "Isn't that when I wish something, it can become true?"

"That was the rule for lucid dreams, not parallel universes."

"Gaaawd, I'm so hungry!" My arms spread into air, full of desperation. "Dear god of this world, gimme money!'

"It's not working like that, don't you know anything about parallel universes?" he asked me with his annoyed voice. My lips pouted at him as a confirmation before he began with his nerd talk. "There are three theories of parallel universes. Level one would be the infinite universe that exceeded our cosmic visions."

I sat in tailor fashion and tried listening to him intently. "Okay?"

"That means, in our universe, far from what we know, there are many earth-like planets."

"Ah, I see."

"Level two would be about branes."

"Ah, brains, get it."

"Not brains but branes."

"Ahh, brains and not brains!" I repeated and lifted my arms like a zombie, giggling slightly. "Braaaains!"

"Memb- whatever," he responded with half-lidded eyes. "In our world exist four dimension, which would be length, width, height and time. A theory said that we're a small piece of a bigger construct with more than the dimensions we know."

"I know nothing."

"A lot more. You can imagine it like a book and we're just one page of it."

"Woah."

"Level three would be the bubble construct. You can imagine our galaxy's a big bubble and there are many more bubbles, hence other galaxies."

"Like those bubbles here?" I asked, my eyes and index finger following one of the big orbs from the island. They were really pretty, reminded me of childhood.

"Er... Yeah, exactly..." I heard him answering, hardly accepting my comparison. "However, it could be that we're already existing in this universe here! And it could be all of those three levels!"

I stared at him with squinted eyes, unsure about his words. "But an old man created this, didn't we just land more in some odd manga world? How should we possibly exist here already?"

"Uff, I don't know Zo. It was just a thought," he replied with a sigh, slugging his shoulders. "But if we're already here, let's find out what period in the manga this is!"

"And what about our way home?" I questioned. "And food?! Zach, I'm SO hungry..."

"Everything one by one, come one!" said he and started to walk off without me as if this universe was the most normal thing that could happen to us.

Great. I hadn't even had breakfast this morning, since I wanted to head home as soon as possible. My last meal was yesterday around eight in the evening and who knew what time it was in our universe now (time difference, one thing that I knew!). Before I went after my brother, I picked up the little scabbard of the knife the guy had dropped and put it shut in my pockets. We were in a world full of insane outlaws, it was never wrong to be armed.

As we walked through the Archipelago, our eyes couldn't stop expressing astonishment about everything we only knew from ink and animation. The place was way more beautiful live than any art I have ever seen of it. Oh, have I mentioned that we looked pretty matched with this world? I have never seen my boobs that big and my waist that thin while also being spared with back-problems! Unnecessary but funny experience. My brother even lost the pimples on his forehead.

However, after strolling around the groves and never ended our fascination for everything we were seeing, Zach halted in front of an unoccupied Bon Chari of some stranger. "This is awesome! How is that physical possible? It's just the bubble that carries the controlling body, right? Else, it should be just a usual body with a small engine."

"Uh Zach, don't touch strangers stuff..." I reminded him.

"Y-you're right, but this is awesome though!" he answered, trying to back off but stuck instantly to another across. "I really wanna rent one of these!"

"And I want food," I side-commented and grabbed his arm to pull him away from it. "I have an idea where we could go first."

"An idea? An idea for what?" he wanted to know.

"Well, if we wanna find out in what timeline we're now, let's just visit the places in the manga."

Well, Zach had told you the story started somewhere when we got sucked in. It kind of, but I wanna skip to when the story really started. You can pretty much imagine how our reactions were when we fell into another reality, exploring as some geeks what this world felt like upon our finger tips. Here and there was a moment of squeal, a moment of speechlessness and never any boredom (but my bro's lame nerd-talk). We haven't seen vital characters so far nor Navy soldiers, but hoped to find some at a certain place as chaos didn't occur yet.

###

We ended up in front of 'Shakky's Rip-off Bar' after asking locals for its location. Ever climbed so many stairs? Even as a trained person, it was exhausting. Analyzing the condition of the board, it looked whacker than the art could depict, made it representing its name reasonably. Quietly, we moved to one of the windows and crouched in front of it, looking at each other.

"Okay, first we check if the Straw Hats are inside," I said.

My brother nodded and we slowly lifted our bodies to glance inside.

I thought my mind was going to explode that very moment we spotted Luffy and his friends and crew mates inside the walls, having some conversation with that very young looking old Ma'am. With big eyes, I glared at Zach to ask for confirmation of the same visual and he nodded with a copy of the face I made. "These are Luffy, Chopper, Brook, Camie, Hachi and the starfish whose name I forgot...!"

"I also forgot his name," he whispered to me. Carefully, he tried to catch another look of the bunch. "Looks like the drama ha- where are you going?!"

On my way to the entrance, I looked over my shoulder to him. "Inside."

Zach pulled me away from there by my arm. "Are you stupid?! Ever heard of butterfly effect?!"

"Oh geez, c'mon! What bad should happen there, they just do some small talk."

"No you idiot! We won't involve into the main plot! You'll screw everything!"

"Do ya think we will change the plot of all One Piece mangas and animes in the world?!"

"At least in our world!" he snapped at me. "If this isn't a dream, our and this universe are connected, thus this could be the One Piece world for us! We practically traveled into the past of this, so don't dare to mess up the plot unless you wanna cosplay yourself when we're home!"

"If we ever get back home!"

His look at me switched soon to one as if he had stolen my pony with regret. "I'm sorry... I didn't want this to happen..."

"What no! I didn't blame you, this was just a neutral statement!" said I right away. "I mean, it's awesome to see the world from this perspective! Somehow..."

He wavered between agreement and disagreement, taking a deep nervous breath through his gritted teeth then. Really, we loved One Piece, when we were younger, we had fantasized about a co-existence of us born into this world, but neither one of us would forget the fact that this world wasn't a kindergarten, by far not.

"Okay, uhm," Zach mumbled and tried to calm the situation. "I would say, we look for the auction house before the drama starts. Just watching, okay?"

I nodded and exhaled like it would be a challenge to stay in the back. "Yes, Sir."

So our next destination turned out to be the auction house, though we needed to ask locals again. If the money would be there, a map would've been less inconvenient. It was quite a journey to get through the big groves by walking, so we were happy that the actual event was still ahead, since Luffy and his group needed to spend some time in the Sabaody Park first (which I also was eager to see). This world was pretty fun when you blinded out the evil things. If we were able to return to our universe, this was a great experience that every One Piece stan should have made once.

Nevertheless, my mind was filled with worries. "Uhm Zach, one question."

He was walkng next to me. "Hm?"

"Did we just vanish from your lab now and could be theoretically missed?"

His brows narrowed, looking suddenly more serious. "Not improbable. It could even be that the time over there goes faster and we're missed for years now. I'm just wondering if the gate I created shuts after we disappeared. I mean, there was nothing new falling from the sky after us."

"Oh yoosh, this-"

A sudden explosion interrupted my response and our heads turned over to a building which wall was not present anymore. Smoke gathered from the big hole and the citizens around screamed and watched what was going on.

"Holy shit!" Zach shouted. "This is the music guy, errr... Apoo!"

Tall and in his weird fashion in clothes and hair, the Supernova stood there in fighting position, staring straight to the explosion he had come from. That was definitely odd, this was the first person around we saw that displayed a look our world would never consider normal (ignore the sea creatures from before). He was insanely tall and his physique paradox.

"Captain! You can't!" yelled someone from the scene before another familiar face made its appearance in the flying dust.

"Oh shit!" Zach lost it again, grabbing his head with both hands. "Shit! Shit! Shit! Eustass Kidd!"

There the redhead stood, babbling provoking stuff I didn't remember from the manga, but couldn't hear from the distance anyway while the normal folk around panicked in noise. Seeing Devil Fruit powers in action? That would be highly interesting, since it was beyond our normal science.

"Oh boy, this is like being in a One Piece theme park with great cosplayers, playing a manga scene," I said and my brother agreed. I eyed Kidd's face more thoroughly while he grinned maliciously at his opponent. "Eww... he's such an ugly creep up-close."

"NOW FIGHT ALREADY!" Zach suddenly exclaimed and my eyes shot wide before I grabbed him and pulled him to the side behind a building.

"What the hell, are ya crazy?!" I asked the idiot, who covered his own mouth in shock himself.

He let go of it and cleared his throat. "Fuck, I didn't mean to! It was just too exciting! B-butterfly effect! Butterfly effect!"

My eyes slitted and I looked at him as if he was stupid. I mean, he was stupid. "Are ya stupid?" asked I with curled fingers, twisting my stiff hand. "This is not about the Butterfly effect, it's about life! Imagine he'd kill us for that comment!"

"Oh my god, I didn't consider that, you're right!" he replied and nodded frantically, the consternation about his own behavior still written on his face. "Let's watch that from the side quietly."

"Nooo," I told him, somewhat appalled about his naivety. "We're gonna get away from here, this isn't safe anymore!"

"Girl, we're in a shonen-jump manga world, nothing here's safe!"

I grabbed his wrist and start to drag him away from the scenery. "Let's go to the auction house, Zach."

He didn't say much to it anymore but followed my plan, surely with an eye roll as we left the spot. However, two odd-looking Supernovas (okay, I'd say, seven out of eleven were quite abnormal in appearance) before our eyes was indeed exciting, but you should never forget that those were strong pirates that messed with the government and anyone else. Wasn't Kidd one of those kiddos (I know he's older than me, but pun intended) that enjoyed treating civilians bad? And when I wasn't able to compete with any of those (to 200%), how should my nerd twin brother?

Anyway, we treated our time on this tree-island as if we had too much. All in all it was interesting though, when you stumbled upon big Transponder Snails; the three giant displays that were going to show the paramount war a few days later; other cool oddities; things that halted us for a few minutes in amazement. We even crossed a street with a pool of blood right in the way and guess it to be the spot Zoro had his encounter with that World Noble jerk Saint something. For me, it still felt like a big museum or theme park.

###

Our relaxation crumbled when we saw the Flying Fish Riders passed above our heads, indicating that Camie finally got kidnapped. The time was just flying as those guys, thus we accelerated our speed a little to the auction house. It hadn't been that far anymore, Grove 1.

As we arrived at the building, the last few people were walking through the door. Next to it sat a grim-looking giant, who we of course identified as none other but Jean-Bart. I didn't know why, but I felt kind of happy to see the poor chained guy and hopped like a child right over to him. What I received was a quiet, but somewhat puzzled look and I couldn't avoid myself saying, "Captain Jean-Bart!"

Still staring at me, but now in surprise, he responded, "it's been a while that someone called me by that name."

I guess Zach's jaw dropped deep down to the dirt. He grabbed my arms and smiled at the giant with force. "Excuse me." Pulling me away from the former pirate then, I was instantly confronted with his complaints, "what the hell have you done?! Didn't I say, JUST WATCHING?!"

I shrunk with narrowed brows and arched lips. "I just greeted him."

"And you changed the plot!" he claimed and shook me by my shoulders. "Law was the one who supposed to call him by his name first...!"

"Stop shaking me...!" I sneered back in slight dizziness until he let go again. "I'm sorry, I forgot that."

"Oh geez, Zoey!" he nagged on me. "I knew you're a Jarhead, but what did the Marines filled it with?! Air?!"

"Hey! You made a mistake too just recently!"

"But not that significant!"

"What?! Excuse me, our life's more worth for me than some plot changes?!" I snapped, not believing what he just had said even after I had apologized while he hadn't.

"What if you've changed EVERYTHING now?! B-utter-fly effect!" Frustrated he grabbed his head again and messed up his hair, growling, "why can't you listen to your older brother once?!"

"I think I'm the alpha twin here!" I responded and pointed to myself.

"I'm older and I'm taller! You're just muscle brain, airhead!"

Annoyed, I grabbed his collar. "Do you know what it takes to get promoted within the military?! Do you know that?! And I saved your life probably TWICE today!" I ranted back and adapted to his stupiding tone, "t-wi-ccce."

It probably sounded like our little fight had escalated unnecessary, and yeah, we continued like that for the next five minutes until one of us rolled their eyes utmost exasperated and ended the rampage (my brother). Well, we decided to forget about the little accident and opened the big gate of the auction house.

I mean, I did believe in the butterfly effect, but I couldn't imagine that this was going to change the plot that notably much.

A/N: So! I know, nothing much happened in this chapter up to no-canon-character-interactions (except the last); and that I theoretically just threw them through Sabaody, but only to spare you from long boring exploration and reaction stories to every little detail. Anyway, thanks for reading!