AN: As you should have got from my description, Pirate King Luffy gets pulled into an alternate universe. A universe where he is actually a Marine. And shit is hitting the fan for this world.

As Vegapunk hasn't been formally introduced in canon as of the current moment, I will create Vegapunk as I see him to be with the given facts. I may go back later equipped with more information, but in the meantime I'll enjoy writing his character as I imagine it.

- DW

01
He smells of blood and rain.
.

Blood pounded in his eardrums, threatening to burst with the slightest increase in pressure. His head was ringing, and the shouts that ripped through his torn throat silent to his own ears. One eye was swollen shut, still stinging but not the forefront of pain. He was enraged, ready to kill, to murder, and as his foe fell to his fists he hardly noticed skin being ripped apart, tattered flesh barely anchored to his bones.

He felt old wounds split apart, sending white hot pain pulsing across his back. His body was ready to implode, both mentally and physically. He was beyond his limits, well beyond his limits. It was fight, or die. The final battle, the climax, if he didn't fight to the end, all he had done up until then would be for naught.

Red splattered the ground like raindrops, the earth shook and the sky quaked. He was ready to die, they were all ready to die – die fighting for what they lived for, and even if they failed, it had all been worth it. Losing was not the same as failure. His heart stopped for a moment when they clashed again, blood spraying and the pain intense enough to be felt by the people below. Bones broke, muscle tore, organs burst and rebuilt again and again, over and over.

The eye of the storm, the final stand, blue tower fall, sky dragon roar, the beginning, the end of all things and the unstoppable will … and the truth.

Shouting until blood coated his throat, all remaining energy and more poured into one final blow. Winding up and up and up, stretching and contorting before–

He was jerked back into reality with a horrifying clear understanding of something so disturbing and so utterly earthshattering, that he was left reeling. Gripping his chest, he desperately tried to suck in the ever so needed air. It felt like a lifetime ago he last breathed. While his body was temporarily lacking motor functions, his brain had gone into overdrive in a vain attempt to process the events just witnessed in his unconscious state.

It was the most terrible thing he had seen in his life. He didn't even know things like that could happen! So why, so why did he dream of such an awful thing? Unfortunately, no matter how hard his mind worked, he could not come to a conclusion.

Luffy didn't even bother to try to comprehend the thoughts than ran through his head as he partook in that dream battle. It was too much to handle, so he forced it into the corner of his mind where anything he refused to think about lay dejectedly. It drifted from his present thoughts altogether, but he was still left with the terrifyingly crisp images and sensations that the dream had brought.

When he had calmed down marginally, he heaved himself up into a sitting position and stared at his shaking hands. His fingers could hardly move and when he looked at them he somewhat expected them to be coated in a layer of blood and dirt and who knows what that other stuff had been.

Carefully, and fearing the results, he slowly moved until he could check the rest of his body for the phantom signs of battle – there were no scars, his eyes were perfectly all right, his hair was still relatively clean and not crusted in dried blood and dirt, and there were no cuts (open, closed or otherwise). He once again looked down at his hands and arms – they had stretched. His arms had stretched like they were made of rubber. Giving an experimental tug at the corner of his mouth he determined that no, he was not made of rubber. He pinned it as a distortion in the dream, as the subconscious sometimes twists reality.

He swallowed thickly and ran a hand through his hair. Well, he was going to be haunted by that for the rest of his life. It was permanently burned into the back of his eyes. Shaking his head, he got off the bunk and stumbled into the bathroom he shared with twenty other people. In the dead of the night it was usually empty, but sometimes there was one or two stragglers getting a drink of water, taking a piss, or eating stolen food.

He padded barefoot across the cold floor and approached the sinks. After splashing his face in freezing water a couple times, he looked up at the mirror to see a tired looking boy just younger than him leaning against the back wall. It was his friend from the Science Division and not one of the generic douchebags he had to bunk with, which he was extremely grateful for. Though the boy could move like a ghost when he wanted to, Luffy could always tell when someone was near. Nobody could sneak up on Monkey D. Luffy, and that was a fact.

Toma was observant and possessed great insight. He saw the spooked eyes and trembling limbs, and shot Luffy a concerned frown. "Something up?" the boy inquired with the same dryness of a burnt cookie. The brunette raised one of his slender eyebrows at him, purple eyes still half lidded from sleep deprivation (he probably just returned from his work, despite it being so early in the morning).

"No?" Luffy said unsurely, eyes widening further. It was widely known that he was a terrible liar, and Toma didn't even need his great powers of understanding or a good night's rest to spot the lie.

"Dammit Luffy, you know you can't lie, so don't try. I've never seen you like this before. Tell me what's going on."

Toma was also very blunt.

Luffy opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again, looking down at the dirty floor. After cultivating a suitable answer from his tired and overused mind, he once again looked up at the boy, "I can't say."

"Why not?" it seemed this had succeeded in getting Toma aggravated and further screwed Luffy over. Neither of them was very touchy-feely and the conversation was getting awkwardly tense very fast. The fact that Luffy was so shaken was a sign that something was seriously wrong, and Toma was very determined to pry the answer from the other man whether he liked it or not.

"I don't know! It was … I've never seen anything like it … it wasn't like a dream at all …" Luffy started to panic, flailing his arms around to try to get his point across. Though he looked like an idiot (similar to his normal daily behavior) it was his eyes and the way that he was still unsteady on his feet that gave him away.

"You're not making any sense."

"There was so much blood!" he choked out in a hoarse voice and once again images and feelings flooded through him. He dropped to his hands and knees, forced to watch as once again he fought to a brutal death. Toma was instantly at his side, watching his reactions and trying to somehow get the shell-shocked man to calm down. "I was dying! T-Trying to kill that person – I don't even know who he is dammit! It was fucking insane and so clear, like a memory. It was like the world was ending–"

He was crying.

Luffy stopped in mid-sentence when he realized that hot, thick rivers of tears were streaming down his face and dripping onto the floor. Toma looked startled and pained to see his friend in such a pitiful state. The boy frowned before getting to his feet and hauling the still sobbing Luffy to his. "Come on. Let's get you something to eat. I'm sure you'll feel better with something in your stomach."

That was the last they spoke of it for many months.

Months later …

"Shit …" Garp swore under his breath as he slowly skimmed through the update he just received from Sengoku. According to the dammed thrice piece of paper, Teach had advanced further into the New World and the casualties – Pirates, Marines and civilians – were piling up. On top of that, Whitebeard was flanking left and slowly approaching a key Marine base, and don't even get him started on the situation with the Revolutionary Army.

It was as fucked up as it could get, and the Maries just happened to be on the losing end of the insane war.

It was bad enough that there was some sort of temporary alliance between Whitebeard and Red-Hair, but now it seemed that Big Mom had joined forces with Blackbeard of all people. Kaido was dead already, which lead to an open position in the Yonkou that Teach had immediately assumed, for the moment at least. It was pretty obvious that he was on his way towards Raftel, the legendary island at the end of the Grand Line that only Roger, Garp's ex-rival, had reached some twenty nine years prior.

Damn it all to hell, he thought bitterly and tossed the pages onto his temporary desk. He had been sent off on a bullshit mission to the outskirts of the Grand Line to investigate a painfully obviously false rumor. Apparently a local claimed to have spotted one of Whitebeard's commanders. Sengoku just wanted him away from headquarters for a while, he was sure. He and his grandson were their two greatest pains, and the Admirals and the head of the science division, Vegapunk, had been sneaking around having secret meetings with Sengoku without letting him know. Something about that was fishy.

Speaking of fishy, the stench of cooked fish wafted into his cabin and the door was tossed open to reveal his grandson. The boy (still mentally a child at twenty-four) indeed had a hunk of fried fish in one hand, casually eating it without the aid of utensils. "Oi, Ji-chan, when are we going to get there?"

Garp sighed and resisted the urge to slap his palm to his forehead. There was only so much of his grandson he could handle before he started to lose his hair. Already he was sure he was developing a bald spot on the back of his head; so much for decades of great hair. It was likely that there was a big red mark on the middle of his forehead anyway.

"I've already said – about a week."

Oh no, not again, Garp mentally groaned and kicked himself in the shin. Luffy's lower lip jutted out in a pout, displaying an impressive example of the dreaded 'puppy-eyes'. The boy's pleading expression was infamous throughout headquarters as something that could melt the hearts of the most solid and cold of men. It was deadly.

Garp, unfortunately, was not immune.

"I'm bored though!" the younger man whined, making Garp somewhat wish that he had given up trying to drill into Luffy's head as a lad that he needed to be a Marine. He wished that he hadn't made the decision to take him along with him into the Grand Line to start training him from a young age.

Garp silently berated himself for falling for Luffy's pout, "Go find something to do!"

"That's why I came to you!"

"Go somewhere else!"

It was going to be a long mission.

"Hey, Toma," a young blonde woman said quietly, frowning at her dinner. It was bland and looked like a mix of green and grey goop – over all very unappetizing. Unfortunately it was all the Marines could afford to supply to their personnel at the present time as all the funds were being directed to the war effort. She could hardly complain about the quality of food.

"Yeah?" the boy replied, looking up from where he'd been poking at his own dinner. It was obvious that there was something on his mind, but then again, there was something on most people's minds.

"What do you think Vice-Admiral Garp is going to do when he finds out about the project?" she said. It was common knowledge among those privy to what the project entailed that Garp had been sent off to do a mundane scouting mission just to get him off everyone's backs for a while, especially nearing its completion.

Toma thought for a moment, taking the time to seriously consider it. He prodded at the mass of goop with his spoon, stirring it together until it looked more like puke than food. It was good that he wasn't about to eat it in the first place. "I'm not sure, but it'll probably be pretty bad. I don't even think Luffy would be able to calm him down."

The woman, Ricka, shivered in fear and set down her own spoon. "That's a frightening thought."

"I know what you mean."

It was a fact that Luffy seemed to be the only person in headquarters that Garp had a serious soft spot for, even if the Vice-Admiral still drove his grandson into the ground at the best of times. The man was a slave driver on his good days. Luffy was the only one able sooth the veteran's fury when he was in one of his moods.

"How do you think Luffy will react?" Ricka asked with a faraway look.

Toma laughed, throwing his head back in hysterics, "He'll probably beg whoever we pull through to train him!"

Ricka smiled softly, temporarily sated. "He probably will," she said affectionately.

Both she and Toma were involved in a top secret, supper hush-hush mission that could possibly turn the tides of the war. It was all Vegapunk's idea (and she was sure that there was some sort of ulterior motive, considering the amused glint in his eyes as he explained the theory) and the entire Science division had been roped into it. Ricka herself was actually a doctor, but because of how short they were on staff, she had been ordered to join as well. So far, only the Admirals, Sengoku and those involved were aware of the truth behind the matter. They didn't want it to get out until after the fact so that less people would complain.

They wanted a solider, a fighter, someone so powerful that no one in their world would be able to stand up to them. What they needed was the strongest man in the world. Unfortunately, the person who held that title in their world was currently on an opposing side. So when Vegapunk came prancing in shouting that he had 'Found it!' it was understandable that they were all confused.

At first, they were unsure of what he was saying. Then he laid the groundwork for his theory. And then he proudly stated that he had already started the project and located a parallel world in which the strongest man was not a violent prick and would probably help them (emphasis on probably).

On the other hand, it was impossible to contact them while they were in the other world, so they couldn't strike up a deal beforehand. They would have to do it the old fashioned way – kidnap him, beg for mercy and then convince the man to help them. All three Admirals and Vice-Admirals (excluding Garp, who had been sent on a mission because of the obvious protests he would give) had been called in for backup if necessary.

Because, quite frankly, they were all a little worried that the strongest man wouldn't like their offer and open up a can of whoop-ass on them. They were all more than a little afraid, and it was for this reason that headquarters was monopolizing the Marine's strongest members.

"Don't worry about it. If we don't die, then Garp won't have anything to complain about. We'll have practically won already!" Toma assured her, showing his own confidence and excitement.

"Yeah!" she grinned in response.

"Are you absolutely sure that it'll pull through who we want?" Sengoku was not in the mood for second guesses and less than 100%. Now that he knew it was possible, he wanted it to be true – the strongest man, fighting for them to ultimately win the war. Because, yes, at this point he was desperate and would sink to asking for help to end the insanity of a four-way war.

"Yes! In fact, I even know who it is," Vegapunk's mischievous grin was mocking him. Sengoku didn't fully trust the man – far too intelligent and liked to play around with them like a cat played with its food. Sure, he was an invaluable asset, but sometimes he was more trouble than he was worth.

"Why don't you enlighten me then?" Sengoku sighed, massaging the bridge of his nose.

"I'm sorry, I really should not say," Vegapunk said in a sing-song voice, rocking back and forth on his heels.

Well, figures.

"Vegapunk, just what the hell are you up to anyway?"

The elderly man chuckled, shaking his head. Sengoku couldn't see his eyes, and it made him nervous. They were hidden behind thick tinted orange goggles, so they looked a little buggy. It was like interacting with a statue sometimes, a very sassy and sarcastic statue."Trust me this time – you'll thank me for it!"

"You'd better be right," Sengoku reluctantly gave up trying to get answers from the man. They would come out on their own eventually. Vegapunk had a knack for giving people the bare minimum, subtle clues so the person would piece together everything at the end. That was just his way.

"Well, we're all set – just waiting for your signal."

"Garp won't be back until the end of the month …" Sengoku muttered to himself before nodding and fixing a determined scowl on his face. He would have looked threatening if not for the stuffed seagull perched on his hat. "Do it."

"Give biowave detectors maximum power."

"They're already at max, Sir!"

"Excellent. Can we track the signal?"

"Yes! We're tracing!"

"East Blue, Sir!"

"Locking on!"

Vegapunk's mad grin stretched farther than his subordinates thought possible. Lights flickered and noises whizzed. A throbbing pressure emanated from a central point behind a thick panel of glass. The air was distorted and heat rolled off of it in waves. The scientists were all sweating profusely, some opting to take off their coats and roll up their sleeves. They did not have a need of professionalism at that moment.

Ricka watched with growing fascination. The chance to meet the world's strongest man was always a rarity, and the chance of meeting one from another world (one supposedly stronger than even Whitebeard himself) was practically zero. They were bending the laws of the universe, doing what was not supposed to be possible. It was the greatest scientific achievement to date.

Twisting blue light joined the white noise and pulses of energy. The pressure increased until all the scientists in the room were having trouble remaining conscious. The sheer density of the energy pouring through was simply intense.

One by one, they started dropping like flies. Only a handful was strong enough to be able to stay awake, even if they shook in fear. A cold feeling of dread gripped Ricka's heart as she sat on standby, knowing that at this rate she would be patching up more than one person. It was the sole reason that she was sitting in a room full of scientists – she was there because they were pulling a living breathing human being through a trans-dimensional portal. It was dangerous work.

The twelve still conscious revved the machine like an engine, focusing on the central point in the other world. The machine hiccupped, and a blast of energy pushed against them, shattering the glass and sending loose objects flying every which way. It was lucky that no one was hit by stray debris, though it gave her quite a scare.

A low droning filled the air, making Ricka's ears ache. She had doubts. It seemed as though if the person they pulled through wouldn't kill them, the machine would. It was practically suicide! Just as she was about to voice her uncertainty the head scientist beat her to it.

"We need more!" Vegapunk's shout was momentarily louder than the noise. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Toma dive for the panel at the side of the room. He flicked a handful of switches and replaced wires, and the light grew steadily more intense while the rest of the room dimmed. She covered her ears and crouched low next to a desk, trying to shield her eyes.

An insane laugh drifted above it all, ringing in her ears and taunting her. One of the scientists had gone mad. The man tried to jump over his desk and towards the light, but was tackled to the ground by two others. With those three out of the picture, it was down to nine. Ricka could only watch in horror as the energy continued to tug at her will, and she forced it away.

Vegapunk dived for one of the computers. His fingers flew across the keyboard before red lights flashed across the room. He had hacked the grid. And then, in a moment of brilliance and awe, everything was bleached white in a magnificent display of power and destructive force. It was like a controlled explosion.

Ricka blacked out for a moment, and when she came to the room was in shambles. Everything was scattered, machines broken, people unconscious and groans of pain lifting up from the others. As far as she could tell, no one was dead. Just to make sure, she forced herself to get up. She drifted along the wreckage of that of a war zone, and found that thankfully, everyone was alive and had all their limbs attached.

Vegapunk emerged in the fashion of a jack-in-the-box, bits of drywall stuck in his crazy hair and goggles askew. The man scanned the room with narrow eyes, making Ricka uneasy.

"What do you think he's looking for?" a voice startled her, and she looked down to see Toma lying on his back a few feet away from her. She helped him out from under the ruined desk, and noted that he wouldn't need first aid, but looked considerably worse for wear.

"I don't know," she whispered back, her gaze flicking to the man who was tossing desks aside to check under them, ignoring his unconscious subordinates.

Suddenly a barking laugh erupted from his throat, and Vegapunk vaulted over the broken furniture. He came to a stop at the side of the room, where a splash of red disrupted the monochromatic color scheme. It was the back of a shirt and thankfully not blood.

The scientist dragged the man out of the wall and shook him into a semi-conscious state. Ricka could only see his back and the straw hat on his head from where she was. She wondered if he was alright and needed first aid. "Wha?" he groaned groggily, and she could vaguely see him bring his hand up to his face to give his eyes a rub.

Ricka froze, blood running cold at the voice. She knew that voice, and the look on Toma's face said that he too knew exactly who it was.

The strongest man in the world …

"Welcome to our world, Monkey D. Luffy!"