Author's Note: Thank you deeply for all of the kind support and excitement expressed for this story! I was really touched by everyone's love for the opening chapter of Ripples in the Pond. Also, some of you have noticed this, but for those who haven't, the All-Seeing Author - - the catalyst for everything that happens in this fanfiction - - is loosely based off of B.R.O.B from the Cross-Brains' This Bites! Both are omniscient, godlike figures who come into contact with the main character online and send them into One Piece. In fact, if you recall, I even gave "Bastard Random Omnipotent Being" as one of All-Seeing Author's past pen names. So of course, all credit for him goes to Xomniac. Other than him, the plots and characters in this story are fully owned by Eiichiro Oda.

Chapter 2: I'll Be a Pirate When Boats Fly... Oh Wait

Thoughts swirled and blew around in my brain like Hurricane Katrina, overloading my mind. I felt dizzy, unbalanced, thrown off my feet. I stumbled backward in shock, a mixture of emotions so complex rising in my gut that it was impossible to tell one apart from the other. I was standing on top of the marsh. I was walking on water! Could anything be more amazing than that?

"I'm Jesus," I breathed, floating on the water's surface like a water spider. "I'm freaking Jesus. Or Percy Jackson or something. Or - - or - -"

I blinked in realization.

No way. I had essentially just become my own character, the one from my most popular fanfiction series. With these abilities, and especially considering the circumstances I found myself in, I had gained the powers of my own Damon D. Digger.

That was… kind of mind-boggling.

Feeling light-headed, I teetered backward and fell right into the water. Luckily it was barely knee-deep; otherwise, being a newly christened Devil Fruit user, I might've been dead right then and there. I doubted having water powers would enable me to not become a Hammer. As it was, I felt an enormous amount of energy fly out of my body, leaving me groggy and bleary-eyed. The cool water of the marsh sloshed around my skin, and I splashed wildly, fighting my sudden tiredness to try and get out of the marsh.

It was quite pathetic, really - - I'd always been rather good at swimming, and had even made seventh place in the county swim team meet as a kid. Now here I was nearly drowning in a knee-deep marsh… facing upwards.

Finally, I managed to fight my way onto dry land, gasping and gagging, clutching at the solid earth like it was my lifeline. My senses felt like someone had taken a video editor and slowed down everything by three-fourths. An indescribable panic had risen in my gut, and I suddenly understood why Hammers avoided water at any and all costs.

"That," I panted once the world returned to normal, "was not fun."

I took a deep, terrified breath and got to my knees.

It was only then when I realized I was completely dry. Not even my clothes were soaked, and I must've been thrashing about in that marsh for at least five minutes. But my starting gear - - my leather jacket, a gray Nike T-shirt, a dark pair of blue jeans, and my gray Vans - - were as dry as they'd been before I fell in.

An amazed grin snuck its way up my lips. "Whoa, that's awesome!" I exclaimed, patting my perfectly dry shirt in disbelief. Then I realized something. If my clothes had also passively gained the ability to stay dry in water, even when I wasn't wearing them… that would make washing my clothes a rather tough task to perform.

Well, I could cross that bridge when I came to it. Now that I had a way to survive in this world, I was back at square one - - figure out just where the hell I was.

I stood up fully and put my hands on my hips, tapping my foot. "Now then, where should I start?" I wondered, thinking deeply. "Hm…" I grinned as a memory struck me. "Well, if there's one thing I learned from Saturday morning cartoons, it's that moss always points towards civilization!"

So then, where was the nearest mossy rock?

I spent a few minutes scanning the marsh to try and find a mossy stone on its shore. After all, that environment would be ideal for the growth of moss. It took a while, but I finally found one. The moss on it was growing on its east side.

I perked up and got back on my feet again. "Alright, then, that way it is!" I declared, and started off on my way, in the direction of the rising sun.

However, I hadn't been running East more than twenty minutes when I suddenly paused, tilting my head.

"Um... what's this boat-like shadow on the ground, passing over me all of a sudden...? And why have all the birds in the forest stopped singing?"

My head happened to turn slowly to the right... and I saw a sight which would become forever engraved in my brain: the traumatic view of a small ship hurtling through the air in a direct collision course with me. My jaw dropped to the floor. "WHAT THE HELL!?" I screamed in denial, unable to properly process this sight. "Since when did ships have the power of flight!?"

Oh, well, it didn't matter anyway. Or at least, it wouldn't in about five seconds, which was my estimate for when it would crash into me.

"FATE, I HATE YOU!" I screamed, anime tears running down my eyes as I scrambled to escape the rapidly approaching boat.

SMASH!

The wreckage of the small boat lay in tatters around the smushed forest like the average building in a Michael Bay film. Its blonde-haired ex-owner, Vinsmoke Sanji, wearily rose to his feet, rubbing his aching head in utter pain. As he did so, he absorbed his surroundings; growing up the way he had, he knew the dangers of being unaware of where you were.

The half of the island they were currently on was rather marshy and unwelcoming, but much of the rest of it appeared to be well-fertilized - - perfect for farmland - - or covered in deciduous trees of all kinds. It was a strange mix of ecosystems, yet ran well into each other, creating a chaotic sort of harmony. It was beautiful in its own right... just like the woman he knew who lived on it.

His eyes nearly burst into hearts at the mere thought of the redheaded beauty in question. "Ah... Nami, for you, my dear, I'd let that moron Luffy smash my boat into a million pieces a hundred times over!"

Luffy, his raven-haired, straw-hatted captain, sat up somewhere around the end of this declaration. Twigs and splinters rained off of him, sprinkling endlessly into the earth. He threw his head back and laughed his moronic little head off. "Shishishi! Man, you're really funny, Sanji! I'm glad you're a member of my crew!"

The cook sent a nasty look his way, snapping out of Love Chef mode immediately. "Oi, you stupid Straw Hat, I paid good money for that boat!"

His captain merely grinned and shrugged. "We've got a better ship anyway," Luffy pointed out, moving to a cross-legged position. Movement behind him caught his eye, and he grinned even wider. "Oh, hey, Zoro!"

"Luf...fy.." the voice of the swordsman grunted painfully. Sanji, surprised, blinked and turned around to see his green-headed rival sporting very, very large head and stomach bruises. His face looked like it had been crushed by a mountain, but knowing Zoro, he'd get better. "You better give me one good reason why your ship crashed into me face-first, or I'm going to throw you down to the bottom of the ocean."

The rubber-brained captain shrugged. "You were in the way?"

"...That was at once obviously simple and astoundingly accurate," observed Sanji with a sweatdrop.

Zoro's eye twitched. "Leave it to Luffy to be surprisingly profound..."

The green-haired man looked rather worse for the wear, in Sanji's unprofessional opinion. Covered in bruises and cuts and nasty-looking gashes, Sanji was frankly surprised Zoro wasn't completely unconscious. It actually kind of irked him that he was still moving. Couldn't the directionally challenged bastard just learn when to stay knocked out? It would really make his recovery process a heck of a lot easier...

"Anyway, what're you doing?" Luffy asked, tilting his head. "Haven't you found Nami yet?"

Nami...

Zoro's mood dropped from annoyance to something darker.

He opened his mouth to speak, but had barely formed the first syllable before an unfamiliar, high-pitched male's voice whined, "Geez! What the hell kinda people send a ship flying through the air to try and kill a guy!?"

Sanji blinked. "Um... do either of you know who that is?"

"Nope," said Luffy, and Zoro shook his head, equally oblivious.

Out of the wreckage of the ship, Yosaku - - one of Zoro's apparent old friends from the bounty hunting business - - popped up into sight. "I also do not know!"

The four men glanced around for the source of the unknown speaker. For a moment, they were unable to find him, but then Luffy's eyes landed on a new person who had walked around the edge of the wreckage to them. It was a young man, his face an angry red, with chocolate-brown eyes and dark, windswept hair. He wore a leather jacket and some strange clothes, the likes of which Sanji had never seen before; and he'd met a lot of unusually dressed customers while working on the Baratie.

But his clothes weren't the strangest thing about him. No, the strangest thing was the moment the newcomer's eyes connected with Luffy's... they popped out of his head and his entire body slackened.

Curious as to what their captain was looking at, Zoro and Sanji turned around, blinking.

For a few moments, nothing happened.

Luffy, unblinkingly, strode with stupid confidence toward the unknown person and poked him in the face. This evidently brought the victim out of his abrupt stupor, because he reeled backward, sputtering indignantly.

"H-Hey... what was that for..."

An explosion of giggles erupted from Luffy's mouth, and Sanji, Zoro, and Yosaku all sighed wearily. "Man!" the pirate said, wiping tears from his eyes. "You're really funny, mister! Who the hell are you?"

"That's a rude greeting," the man mumbled, "but I suppose it's your normal one, huh..." He straightened up, his lips turning up into a weak smile. "The name's Evan Johnson - - er, Johnson Evan - - but you can just call me Evan."

I suppose I should've expected to meet the Straw Hats around all the crazy crap, but honestly, I had been so ticked off at almost getting killed that I hadn't been thinking straight. I had managed to roll out of the ship's way at the last moment, right before it crashed into the ground where I'd been moments before. Then the ship had bounced, a feat I hadn't imagined a wooden vehicle was capable of, and skidded around ten or twenty feet before at last tearing to a halt.

Enraged at those aboard (and rather worried for the lives of said people) I ungracefully stomped over to the wreckage...

...And met the soon-to-be-infamous crew called the Straw Hat Pirates.

Judging by the fact that only Luffy, Zoro, and Sanji were present, as well as a young man who looked like he'd been pulled straight out of the eighties, and who could only be one of Zoro's two bounty hunter friends, I could only assume that I'd been dropped on the Conomi Islands. That meant that Nami's hometown was nearby... and also that Arlong and his band of Fishman Pirates were mooching off of the islanders in their nice little rich-ass base.

"Evan, huh?" Luffy said, testing out the name and grinning. He looked every bit the lovable idiot that Oda portrayed him as. His face was somewhat babyish, although his eyes whispered of a much darker past. I hadn't quite expected them to appear that sunken, or haunted. It would seem that Sabo's "death" had affected him more than the original manga let on.

I grinned and gave a thumbs-up. "Yep, you've got it."

"That's an unusual name," commented a blonde-haired, limber teen who had to be Sanji. Who else had hair like a lemon and wore a waiter's suit? "You're not from around here, are you?"

...Shit.

I hadn't thought about where I would claim to be from.

"Erm... I'm from a small, unimportant island nation in the... Grand Line," I decided, my smile twitching a little. That would be reasonable, wouldn't it? After all, only the very richest people or the very strongest pirates could cross the four Blues at will... unless they hailed from the Grand Line, which touched all four seas. "It's called Ohio, and everything's so quiet there you probably have never heard anything about it."

"From the Grand Line!?" exclaimed Luffy, his eyes lighting up. "Whoaaaa! You must be really strong then, Evan!"

I rubbed my head awkwardly at the raven-haired boy's enthusiasm. "N-No, actually... in fact, I only really just got the ability to become strong today..."

Zoro, his hair as mossy-colored as Sanji made fun of him for, stepped forward with a frown. "What do you mean by that?"

Well... It couldn't hurt to tell them, right?

"Um, you see, not even an hour ago, one of those Devil Fruits fell off a tree and rolled at my feet, so I ate it. I think I can control water now or something, because I accidentally walked on the marshes without even realizing I had done so, and when I fell in after that, I came out perfectly dry."

You know how in the anime, anytime Luffy discovered something he thought to be cool, his eyes became super-bright sparks?

Yeah... somehow, that was not comical exaggeration.

I had to shield my eyes and glance away from Luffy so I wouldn't be blinded by his amazement. "YOU CAN WALK ON WATER!?" he exclaimed, rushing to me and shaking me in demand. "YOU REALLY CAN!?"

"G-Gah... Yes! Now let me g-go!"

"SO COOL!" the captain gasped so loudly I nearly lost my hearing in my right ear.

Sanji sighed. "Is he always this way, Zoro?"

"As far as I can tell..." the swordsman muttered wearily. He groaned and shifted the one sword on his hip, the one that Mihawk hadn't broken in their duel, awkwardly. "I don't know how he does it. It defies natural logic."

Rolling his eyes, the blonde tapped his wrist anxiously as though pretending a watch was strapped on. "Anyway, if you only came for small talk," he said impatiently, "we need to get going. We have a beautiful lady to find and take back into our - -"

"WILL YOU JOIN MY PIRATE CREW!?"

The joyous exclamation from Luffy cut Sanji off abruptly, the pure shock of the question momentarily making us all lose proper speech.

Several minutes of my brain overloading later, I managed to return to reality long enough to choke out, "W-wait... you want me... weak ol' me, whom you just met not even five minutes ago and whom you know practically nothing about... to join your pirate crew."

A great, big nod and the kind of grin only a rubber-man could give served as my answer. "Yep!" Luffy confirmed innocently, his smile never once wavering.

"W-wait, WHAT!?" Sanji choked, his cigar actually falling from his mouth in surprise. "Luffy, hold on, we know nothing about Evan - - he even said so himself. For all we know, he could be a member of the Marines... o-or a spy for Arlong or something - -"

"Nah, he's a good guy. I have a good feeling about Evan."

I couldn't help but stare at Luffy for that comment. As far as I could remember, no one had ever said that about me before, except my family, of course, and they were pretty much obligated to say so. In spite of myself, I found myself feeling remarkably grateful to the future King of the Pirates. Somehow, in the short few minutes we'd met each other, he had already come to trust me fully. Maybe it was just a naive, childish way of looking at the world; maybe it was the fatal flaw of a hero; or maybe Luffy had some sort of sixth sense for perceiving a person's trustworthiness. In any case, I could tell from the sparkle in his eyes (no, not the actual sparkle. That was different) that he had already put his faith in me.

These thoughts swirling in my head, I clenched my fists. With a man like Luffy, a character I had looked up to in my old world as a symbol of how to live, doing something like that for me... was there any other answer...?

No. There could be no other answer.

Sanji and Zoro, as well as Yosaku who for some reason remained standing in the wreckage, watched nervously as I tightened my jaw, set my face, and said those famous words:

"Yeah, I'll join your crew."

Luffy grinned. His two other crew mates gaped in mixed horror, disbelief, and resignation. Yosaku appeared distantly similar to how my sister had looked when she had accidentally squirted the milk she was drinking out of her nose once. And amidst it all, the captain of the Straw Hat Pirates and I clasped hands in a firm shake, solidifying the new and unbreakable contract between us.

And that was how I was inducted into the Straw Hat Pirates.

I quickly came to learn that not everyone was completely happy with the recent event of me joining the crew.

Zoro, for one, didn't trust me one bit. Per Luffy's orders, within the space of a mere four minutes, he had fully explained the situation to me. Everything up to me entering the scene had played out exactly as the original events had, it would seem. However, throughout the conversation, he kept glaring at me out of the corner of his eye, glancing at me up and down, like he was trying to size up my fighting strength.

"You look like a breeze could push you over," he said at last, while we were walking towards Arlong Park. Apparently, it was located to the West of where I'd ended up - - so much for Saturday morning cartoon logic. Then again, could you really call anything ran by Arlong 'civilization?' ...That actually was a fairly good question. Huh.

If I had to point a finger at the current timeline in the series, I would say I had landed sometime in the middle of the Arlong Arc, since the second half of the Straw Hats had just arrived and crashed into Zoro. That would mean that the latter was currently running off to try and save Usopp from Arlong; I knew, of course, that Usopp wasn't truly in any danger, but I decided to keep this fact to myself. It wouldn't do to have the crew even more suspicious of me than they already were. Perhaps once things died down, I would tell them that I know pretty much their whole lives...

...After I thought about it, that sounded really unbelievable. Plus it would be really cliche to say I was a psychic. ...Crap.

Back in real time, I huffed at Zoro's unnecessary observation. "Hey, I won't deny that I have very little fighting experience, but I'm not that weak," I grumbled.

Sanji raised his eyebrow. "Really? Because by the lack of muscles in either your arms or legs, it looks to me like you haven't done much more than sit around your entire life."

I fought for a comeback... and realized I had absolutely none.

"O-Okay, you're kind of right about that," I mumbled, my face twitching. "Still, though, when I was younger, I used to take karate lessons, and even won second place in a tournament. I was best with nunchakus... wasn't that bad with the sword, though."

"You still look really weak," Zoro insisted, folding his arms coldly.

"Well... honestly, that was, like, at least eight years ago, and I really haven't done any work outs since then besides gym class and a couple years of running cross-country..."

"Man. What kind of rich-ass lifestyle have you lead...?"

"My family is not rich!" I threw my hands up in protest. "Why does everyone always think that!?"

"Maybe it's because you sit around all day, and look like you haven't worked a day in your life."

"It's not my fault my job hasn't been giving me many hours lately, and isn't manual labor!"

Zoro sighed. "Well, in any case, I'll fill you in on what's been going on since Luffy's too much of an idiot to do so, and this moron" - - here he jabbed his thumb at Sanji, who broke out into an enraged rant - - "will just morph into Love Cook mode anytime Nami comes up. One of our crew members - - our navigator, Nami - - stole our ship, as well as all our money, and headed off to this island. We've come to find out why she did it, get our stuff back, and take any necessary measures. Unfortunately, another member of our crew, a guy called Usopp who we picked up a couple stops back, got captured by the rulers of this island."

"Arlong," I muttered, my gaze darkening.

The green-haired swordsman lifted his eye brow. "Yeah, that's right. You familiar with him?"

Oh, shit, I hadn't meant to say that aloud. Time to bullshit my way through this. "Uhm... not personally, but you can't exactly step foot on these parts without hearing the dude's name."

Thankfully, Zoro's suspicion dropped. "Fair point. Well, regardless, we're going to Arlong Park to save him before he's killed."

"He's already been killed!" an unfamiliar voice exclaimed behind us.

Everyone froze. I nearly yelped in shock; I hadn't heard anyone come up on us. We whirled around, but it was only the other bounty hunter friend of Zoro's; Johnny, I think his name was? The poor guy looked pale and devastated, his entire body trembling. Sweat dripped off of him, no doubt because of the warm sun overhead combined with his hot-looking blue sweater.

"We're too late," Johnny gasped, clenching his hands into fists and dropping to his knees. "Big Bro Usopp is dead!" He punched the ground in despair. "He was killed... by Big Sis Nami!"

Zoro's eyes widened, his hand resting on his sword. A disturbing pallor that didn't fit a man like him swept over his face, and his jaw slackened. Sanji's face twisted into anger, and Luffy simply frowned. Yosaku choked up, his hands shooting up to his mouth in disbelief. And throughout it all, Johnny's body shook as tears poured down his face from behind his glasses, soaking his cheeks. He looked like he'd seen a demon... or, say, a witch.

I closed my eyes and sighed to myself. This... is going to be really painful for me to watch in real life...