I appreciate everyone who made their guesses about who Grace's favorite character was, but unfortunately no one came anywhere close. This chapter makes it pretty obvious who he is, so you'll know what's coming by the time Grace says his name. Hopefully, no one is mad at my choice in characters, and you'll still want to keep reading. And by the way, the bit about the hermit crab and the goldfish comes from personal experience. I'm not kidding.

I don't own One Piece, but I do own Grace, seeing as I spent over a year working on her character development, and I'm still not sure she was ready for her first fanfic debut.

I remember when I first encountered him. The first time, ever. It was such a glorious and magical day. Back when the grand story of One Piece had just begun. He had just been standing there, so casually almost aloof, in the back shadows of the panel.

My first thought had been…Lemons.

Okay not really.

My first thought had been more like, "What is this gorgeous man with gorgeous hair and a gorgeous body doing just standing off in the background?"

"Gorgeous" had seemed to be the only adjective on my mind could come up with at the time.

I had stared inquisitively at his picture, taking every little factor of his person. His dark eyes, his cool, calculating demeanor, his absolutely beautiful hair, long and shiny, and his very stylish clothes.

Then my mind started filling up with lemons.

(Pay no attention to my overactive and occasionally perverted imagination. It sticks odd thoughts in my head very often, which you will see more of.)

Anyway, I wondered why he was simply lurking in the background. Perhaps he was shy, one of those "dark and troubled poets." Ah yes, that seemed to suit him. A dark and troubled poet. He was totally my type.

I kept reading. He did nothing. I was worried that I wouldn't get to see more of him, and that he was to be confined to the shadows of his one panel of glory, to remain simply as a background character.

But then he came back! He stepped out of the shadows all mysteriously and nonchalant, and actually said stuff! And then he started doing these awesome stunts…oh it was so amazing! Maybe he'd become a main character! The prospect of it thrilled me. And then there was a whole page of him! A whole page! With one of those nifty little boxes in the corner that said his name and who he was!

I now knew his name! Three glorious syllables that sounded exotic and erotic all at once. Now I was truly in love.

And then he disappeared again. His grand entrance had been for nothing. And then there was a big explosion and a building blew up. (It was Luffy's fault…no surprises there.) This terrified me. I hadn't yet learned the "No-one-dies-in-One-Piece-except-in-flashbacks" rule. What if he had been incinerated? Consumed by the flames, or crushed under a massive chunk of building?

No! He was alive! He emerged from the wreckage unscathed! Not one bit of his muscular body had been marred! My love was indestructible! I breathed a sigh relief.

And then, I realized he was going to fight.

I couldn't believe it! He got a fight sequence!

He had to win. He had to be at least ten times stronger than that wannabe punk guy with the green hair and earrings who was going to fight him. Not to mention ten times sexier. I mean, earrings on guys? Please. One is okay, but three gold dangly things are just plain girly. And green hair? Yeah, I know this is manga, and people can therefore have whatever hair color they want, (according to the Laws of Anime) but green?" Come on people. Green might okay for grass, and seaweed, and the slimy trails that slugs leave behind, and that stuff that congeals on the inside fish tanks when you don't clean them, but hair? No.

What was that swordsman guy's name anyway? Oh yeah, it was Zoro. I had forgotten because he hadn't left much of an impression on me. So far all he'd done was act emo while he was tied to a pole and eat a bunch of rice balls that were mostly dirt. Yeah, not that impressive. But I didn't really care about him because I knew my character would win.

Oh, and he fought so well! He was ruthless, and had no objections to playing dirty. Fair play? Yeah right. All he wanted to do was win, and he'd use any means he wanted to. I loved it! I liked a man with a dark side.

I could just imagine "Battle without Honor or Humanity" playing in the background. Where was my i-pod to provide violent atmospheric music when I needed it?

Honor and humanity meant nothing to him.

Then after several pages of intense combat, with some killer moves on the part of my favorite character, swordsman guy announced that he was tired.

I laughed in triumph. Ha! He had admitted defeat! I knew my character would have won from the start! There had been no competition! His looks were enough to beat that swordsman guy any day.

Oh, he wasn't tired of fighting. He was tired of my character, it would seem.

I think that kind of pissed my character off.

And then, he crossed into this fancy pose with his three swords and yelled something like, "ONIGIRI!"

Onigiri? What the hell? Who yells about rice balls when they attack someone? Was he gonna like, chuck rice balls at my character or something? That's just lame.

I then read the little footnote and saw that it actually meant. "Demon Slash."

That didn't sound too good.

No sooner had I read the footnote when I saw my character with blood gushing out of his chest collapse to the ground.

I screamed.

I screamed bloody murder.

And then I cried.

I didn't just cry. I sobbed. I wailed.

I cried harder than I think I ever have in my entire life.

I cried harder then when I first saw "Titanic."

I cried harder than when my hermit crab died because my other hermit killed it.

I cried harder than when Mom promised to bury my hermit crab in the backyard, but then two months later when I had gone to get a Popsicle out of the freezer I found a little box that I just had to open, and inside was my dead hermit crab frozen inside, along with my dead goldfish from two years ago. (No kidding.)

I could not be consoled. He was dead. I continued to cry, and sob, and wail.

And then the little old librarian came over and told me get a hold of myself or she'd kick me out for disturbing the patrons.

I abandoned the library computer, and walked home in desolate remorse.

He was dead. He'd had fifteen minutes of fame in battle before his soul was prematurely ripped from his body.

I continued to cry, until my mascara and all my eye makeup washed off and poured down my face and into my mouth and it tasted really bad, so then I forced myself to stop because I didn't want to die from cosmetic poisoning.

Then my friend Mackenzie called me.

"So, how have you liked reading One Piece?" she asked, as she had been the one who had recommended it to me the other day. "Isn't it great?"

"No. I hate it."

"You hate it? Why Grace? You love pirates and manga, and -"

"MY FAVORITE CHARACTER JUST GOT KILLED!" I screamed into the phone. "I'M IN A STATE OF MOURNING!"

There was a considerable pause at the other end.

"Grace, my ears are bleeding." said Mackenzie.

"Sorry." I muttered. "He was just, so cool, and I -"

"Don't tell me you favorite character was Higuma." Mackenzie said incredulously. "You only just started reading. And so far, he should have been the only significant person that's died. Please don't tell me he was your favorite character."

"Was he that mountain guy at the beginning?" I asked. "I don't fall for tacky men like him. I have better taste than that."

"I would hope so." said Mackenzie, sounding relived. "Just a general rule for you Grace, no one dies in One Piece, except in flashbacks, and except for Marines because they get killed all the time. But they don't count because no one cares about them anyway."

"That's not true!" I wailed. "The swordsman guy with the ugly green hair and the stupid earrings killed my favorite character!"

"Zoro killed your favorite character?" said Mackenzie. "Zoro shouldn't have killed anyone yet, except for Helmeppo's dog, which was in a one-panel flashback. Please don't tell me that the dog was your favorite character. I mean, I know you love animals and all Grace, but I think that's taking it just a bit too far and -"

"No." I said cutting her off, rather agitated now.

"Don't tell me it was Captain Morgan." Mackenzie proceeded to ask. "He's not actually dead though, but seriously Grace, of all the characters to pick, Captain Morgan, there are a lot better characters than him, and -."

"NO!" I said. "I finished that part already! I-"

"Then no one else should have died!" said Mackenzie. "How far are you?"

"Up to the part where he got killed."

"Oh, that's really descriptive." she said sarcastically. "The part where he got killed. What part is that exactly?"

"It's not funny!" I wailed. "Stop making fun of my TRAGEDY!"

"Well would you mind telling me who your favorite character was, so I can verify whether or not he's actually dead?" she said, impatiently.

So I told her. There was dead silence on the other end.

"Wow, and here I was afraid that your favorite character was Helmeppo's dog or Captain Morgan." said Mackenzie finally, clearly trying hard not to laugh. "I thought you said you didn't fall for tacky men, Grace."

I hung up, my hand twitching against the phone.

About 30 seconds later, she called back.

"What do want?" I yelled. "Go character-bash someone else! Leave me to mourn in peace!"

"I only wanted to tell you that he's not dead." said Mackenzie.

"What?" I gasped. Then she hung up.

As ticked off as I was at her, I couldn't believe it. I felt as though a large bubble was growing in my stomach and was about to explode, along with the rest of my internal organs.

He was alive!

Hah! Take that Mr. Fancy-Swordsman guy! It's gonna take a lot more than you and your stupid swords and your rice balls to take my guy down! Oh yeah!

That had been the beginning of my love. It had blossomed every since. I didn't care I was the fangirl of a character no one held any appreciation for. But it wasn't like he never showed up again! He got to star in his own side story! Okay, well maybe he didn't exactly star in it, but he was in eleven out of the 28 pages! That's 39 percent! Well, okay, in one of the pages you couldn't really see him, he was a little speck on standing on a cliff in the distance, but it still counts! And since then, he's made two more reappearances! And…I'm still waiting for him to make another.

But I didn't care. I was still in love.

And as I groggily opened my eyes, my head throbbing slightly as I had just fainted from shock, I sat up in my bed and looked where he had been.

He was still there.

"Y-Y-You're….C-Ca-Ca-" I tried to say, shaking as I gaped at him.

He sighed, looking rather annoyed.

"Great, I get a fangirl who stutters." he said, rolling his eyes. "First you pass out on me and now you can't even manage to say my name. Just spit it out, it's not that hard."

I just could only stare, unable to force out the rest of his name.

"For god's sake, it's only my name." he said. "Get a grip on yourself. It's just three syllables, it's not like I'm Donquixote Doflamingo or someone else with an insanely complicated name."

I swallowed, resisting the urge to pass out again.

"Y-You're Cabaji. Cabaji the Acrobat." I managed to say, voice barely audible.

"Knew we'd get there eventually." he said, looking exceptionally irritated, but at least satisfied I had managed to speak two full sentences. "And so I'm told, you are my fangirl."