Note: This chapter has gone through heavy revision and remastering, a process I consider to be de-conflicting with canon and also de-cringifying the works of a 'me' a decade younger and a decade less experienced. The dialogue should be cleaner, and the flow should be better, but there should be no substantial change to the contents from what was here before, so there should not be a need to reread this unless you want to. If there IS a significant change, it will be noted at the end of the chapter.
Date of remastering:12/5/2018. If you are reading this story and you do not see a remastering date on a chapter, it is likely that, unless otherwise noted, there will be discrepancies between various plot points; Please wait warmly for the Remastering process to correct that.
Please enjoy the story.
In the silence of the pre-dawn darklight, Luffy slowly rolled about restlessly, his fingers and eyes twitching ever-more rapidly. A soft gasping moan escaped his lips - and then, all at once, he jerked upright from his bedroll, panting softly.
His head immediately turned to his side; Kuro was still asleep in his bed, finally asleep. The tension faded from his shoulders, and with it, the lingering echo in his head of a deep, cackling laughter. "Ma Mama Mama Mama Mama…!"
"Dammit…" he sighed, quietly. "Thought I was done thinking about that…" gently, he pulled the blanket away from his torso and slowly pushed himself up to his feet -
Suddenly, without warning, without any sound at all, there was another person in the room who wasn't there a millisecond before.
Luffy and the stranger gasped loudly - Luffy from the shock, and the stranger from pain - Before Luffy lunged forward and slammed the stranger against the wall, hands going to his mouth and neck as tendrils of water bound his arms and feet.
"WHO ARE YOU?" He growled, softly, eyes glancing over to Kuro; still asleep.
"MMMF!" The man tried to scream, and his hands thrashed, but Luffy just squeezed harder on his neck, fingers blackened.
"Who are you from? You come here to kill me!?" He growled, until his eyes wandered across his torso. They landed on his neck, where two cords were wrapped around it, one a worn and frayed leather, another a shining thin gold. Luffy's eyes widened, as they traced back to their sources. The leather cord looped back to his back, attached to a torn, burnt, ratty straw hat. The gold chain looped down to his neck, leading underneath his destroyed black suit. Luffy's hand immediately snaked out and pulled on the chain; out came a small, golden hourglass.
Luffy nearly stumbled in place, reassessing the figure in front of him. He hadn't recognized him, before, but there was no doubt now about his source. It was him… or at least, it used to be him. His eyes - both of them - glowed with an ethereal purple light, with the entire right side of his face covered in deep, white scars, standing out like beacons against a skin tone that was two shades darker than Luffy's own tan skin. His hair was no longer black, but instead a shimmering silver, waving in a nearly prehensile manner. He was easily half a foot taller than the younger version of him, and his shoulders flexed against the younger version's grip with incredible power.
"What the…" Luffy's head turned to see Kuro shifting in bed. Immediately, a tendril of water wrapped around the door to the captain's cabin and opened the door, and Luffy dragged his older version by the throat out of the room, shutting the door behind him as silently as it opened.
As soon as they were hidden away in a dark corner, away from the night-shift crew, Luffy slowly lifted his hand away from his doppleganger's mouth. "What's the problem?" He asked, without preamble.
"You have to let me go." Said Doomed Luffy - his voice was nearly an octave lower than his younger counterpart. "I'm not supposed to be here. I got my time frames mixed up. I-"
"No, you're not leaving until you tell me how you're that messed up." Luffy growled, shoving his older counterpart back against the wall. His eyes traced all over the doppleganger's body, alighting for an instant on the gaping hole in his side, bleeding freely. "All that shit comes from injuries you grew back, right? The hair - the height - the skin - who did that? Because I actually LIKE the way I look right now, and not - not all that!"
"No, you don't understand!" Doomed Luffy pleaded. "There's nothing you can do. You already started. You can't do anything. I need to go back further, I only just barely got away - it's the only way to stop him! Please, trust me, if you don't let me go then it's only going to repeat - you don't know how many times I was in your position right now with another one telling me this guy was coming for us, but I finally figured him out-"
"Then how did you get the time wrong?" Roger growled, materializing at Luffy's side. "You said 'you already started' - does that mean that you tried to go all the way back to before we set sail?"
Doomed Luffy's eyes widened. "Roger…!"
"How'd you get the time wrong?" He glanced around. "Matter of fact, where's Doomed Roger? He should have steered you correctly on the time-travel, and he should be here explaining things."
"Roger…! I - he's not here because he's dead!" Doomed Luffy protested. "I've been on my own for months now, trying to figure out everything about -"
"Wait, what!?" Roger interrupted, eyes wide. "I'm DEAD? Bullshit! How can I be-!?"
"It's true, you-" Doomed Luffy cut off mid-sentence, eyes widening in horror. "Oh, no… Did I just - No no nonono-"
Luffy's hands plunged through the space where Doomed Luffy's neck was a moment ago; the clone had disappeared without a trace, as if he had never been there at all.
Luffy's fingers flexed in the air, as the boy stared with a gaping mouth and a growing sense of horror. In a second, he had whirled about on his heels to Roger. "You idiot!" He snarled, furious. "You interrupted him right when he was going to tell us who this guy was! Now he's GONE!"
Roger simply stared at the empty space, eyes wide.
"FUCK!" Luffy hissed, flinging his arms around. He opened his mouth to speak again, but bit it back and breathed, slowly and deliberately. After a moment, his voice was once again level. "He wasn't from a few minutes in the future, so there's no right-away problem, but he was screwed. There's someone that's gunning for us that we don't even know the name of."
"... and if I wasn't so much of an egomaniac that my death shocked me, we'd know something concrete." Roger mumbled. "This was my fault, this time. No excuse. I'm sorry."
The two men stared at each other for a moment, silently, before Luffy sighed. "No point crying, now. We have to move on. He disappeared as soon as he told you that you were dead. Does that mean that what retconned him was knowing that we're fighting somebody strong enough to kill you?"
"... Looks like it." Roger nodded. "Who could it be? I'm confident enough in my power, even without this fruit, that the list is real small. Real end-game players."
"... Blackbeard?"
"That'd definitely be my first guess." Roger nodded. "One of the only 'singular' players that could really threaten us. But… what if it's not him? We can't assume anything."
"If it's that bastard, then did we change something to make him tougher? Did he get something even stronger than Whitebeard's power?"
"Improbable… but possible." the Pirate King said, after a beat of silence. "... there's no point in worrying about it. It's a far-away threat. Did you see his face? He was years older than you. Far too old, even with a two-year training break. Something went horribly wrong."
"... And they didn't retcon themselves backwards until now." Said Luffy, slowly. "He said he was trying to 'figure him out'." He frowned. "He said… he said we were too late, because we'd already started. That means that this guy is waiting for us. Our future means that we're going to get wrecked by this guy."
"Kid, if we start on this doom-and-gloom train of thought-"
"No, that's not it." Luffy shook his head. "Roger, what causes a retcon? Does simply crossing paths with someone from the future do it… or does the future you have to CHANGE something?"
"... Well, technically, knowing the outcome of the future means that something has been changed…" Roger muttered, his dark eyes shining. "But if our perception isn't changed by the knowledge, then that's moot. Someone showing up to say 'hey, spoilers, but Crocodile is going to try and take over Alabasta' wouldn't change anything, because we already knew that. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Warning system." Luffy nodded. "To let us know-"
SPLAT! The two flinched as one at the sudden noise at their feet, leaping back.
"WHAT THE - Oh, shit…" Luffy exhaled, sharply. "Well… that'll work, I guess."
Laying on the ground, slowly draining into a puddle of red, was a severed hand clutching a golden hourglass. The hand was wreathed in silver lines, and in the center of the palms, an hourglass framed by harvesting sickles shone brightly in the dawning sky.
Luffy reached down and gently picked up the hand; as soon as he touched it, the golden hourglass dissolved into shining particles and drifted away in the air to nothingness. "I, uh… I'm not keeping an entire hand in my pocket. Especially not my own."
"Just a finger, then. And later we can cut off the meat and just keep a bone."
SCHWICK! The pointer finger was severed, and the blood floated out of the severed joint telekinetically into the air. With an absent toss, Luffy flung the rest of the detritus into the ocean, and gingerly shoved the now-drained finger in his pocket. "This is seriously gross."
"It'll tell us if we're still screwed, though." said Roger. "As long as that finger doesn't disappear, we're headed to a future where we're going to die." his expression was grim, and he folded his arms uneasily. "Which means everything we think we know about the 'right' way to do this… might be wrong. We could save everyone and fix everything… and that might just lead to an early grave. We're flying in the dark, now."
"... Roger?"
"Mmm?"
"... Don't ever let me end up looking like that guy. He looked like something out of an edgy teenager's secret diary, and I don't think he was even done changing. If I ever get injured enough to morph into that, just let me to call it a day and retcon myself. I mean, I liked how tall I was, but the hair..."
"Hahahahaha…"
BANG!
"Again!"
BANG!
"You call that a grouping!? You couldn't hit a manjack if he was a giant! Aim, you dumb bastard! AGAIN!"
Luffy simply stared at the Krieg instructor, who Pearl had introduced him to but whose name escaped him, barking orders like a drill sergeant at a growling pirate, as a number of his companions hooted and jeered at his failure to shoot the painted target. Django, catching sight of him, slid gracefully across the Bezan's deck to his side. "They're not very good, are they?"
"They pulled off that sea king hunt well enough, but that was mostly Pearl and Gin." Luffy replied, kicking his feet back and forth over the side of the railing he was sitting on. "The instructor knows what he's doing, so I dunno why they sucked so much."
"Maybe he was overworked, cap'n." Django shrugged. "Easier to teach a hundred to fight than it is to teach five-thousand. You can drill deep."
"Think any of the Black Cats could use a refresher?"
"Couldn't hurt. Maybe get a competition going." he smirked. "Nothing like being shown up to light a fire under you."
"True." Luffy looked back out at the sea, letting the silence linger, before speaking again. "Django?"
"Hmm?"
"Why'd you go along with the plan?" Luffy asked. "The one we don't talk about out loud anymore. The one I interrupted. You knew that if he pulled it off the way he wanted, he would have killed you, right?"
"The thought crossed my mind, aye." Django nodded. "I've been with the captain long enough to know the way his thinking bends."
"Then why'd you do it?"
"Because we were treading water for a long time, even before he left." Django replied, resting his head on his folded hands on top of the railing. "We were better than most other scallywags on the seas, but that just meant we got tougher marines sent at us. I didn't have a problem with it, because I'm an agreeable sort, but Kuro wanted out. And we didn't have a hope of going on without him on our side."
"So that meant you were okay with him killing you?"
Django shrugged his shoulders. "It was a risk I could take. Go along with Kuro, and chance him killing us to clean up his past, or go on our own, and guarantee getting clapped by the gullboys and sent to Impel Down, and that won't be a quick death."
"And then you showed up and made it all work out!" He exclaimed, leaping up and spinning around on his toes, before throwing his hands out knife-hand straight at 45 degrees, and balancing on the balls of his feet. "BOW! Now the gang's back together and we're making more progress than we did in years! You were the kick in the ass we needed!"
"Shishishi!" Luffy chucked. "I guess I was. Still, it looks like you guys need to expand. You don't have a deep pool of talent if you're all riding on Kuro's tail. Maybe practice your hypnotism some more and get better at it!"
"I could do that." Said Django, sliding backwards in a moonwalk while bobbing his head to an invisible beat. "One-Two Django needs to start busting a move, too! WHOA!"
"Shishishishishi!" Luffy clapped, laughing happily as Django broke out into an extended dance routine. "You're good at this!"
"DANCE IS LIFE!" he shouted, leaping through the air.
"Teach me, teach me!" Luffy shouted back, grinning. "I wanna dance too!"
"You gotta feel it your soul before you feel it in your feet, captain! First, you gotta get the beat perfect! One, Two! Three, Four! One, Two! Three-"
"Captain!" a voice called out. Luffy's head jerked upwards, to the figure waving his hand from the crow's nest. "Ship sighted off the port bow!"
Luffy frowned, as Django slowly lowered his hands to his side. "We'll continue this." He pushed himself to his feet, crouched low, and leaped up the length of the main mast in a single jump. With a light tap of straw sandals, he touched down on the rail of the nest; moments later, Kuro's hand snagged on the railing and pulled himself up from his fast run up the pole. "Where away?"
"Here. You'll want to see this yourself." the Black Cat handed him the spyglass, and kept speaking as he lifted it to his eyes. "I saw it coming for a few minutes, but I wanted to confirm I wasn't imagining things. Captain, isn't that-"
"It is." Luffy lowered the spyglass, scowling deeply as he handed it to Kuro. "that's MY SHIP."
Kuro frowned, and lifted the tool to his own eyes. "... and it doesn't appear to be Nami at the helm of the Going Merry." he remarked, coolly, as he gazed out at the Straw Hat's ship sailing directly towards them. "They've replaced the sails and flags with plain white, so they're attempting to conceal that it's a pirate ship. Attempting to pass as the pleasure cruiser it was designed as?" he frowned. "The figures on the deck… I can't tell who they are. They're…" he squinted. "... covered in sackcloth, in the middle of a summer morning. Trying to hide their identities, obviously."
"Doesn't matter." Luffy growled. "I can tell from here. Those damn fishmen are on MY SHIP. I'll show Arlong what stealing from me gets you." He crouched down, and his legs rippled with force. His skin turned red, and steam began to billow from his skin. "Ten of them. Four on deck, two in the kitchen, four below deck. They'll be gone by the time you catch up."
"Luffy, wait-"
WHOOMP! With the sound of a sonic boom, Luffy exploded forward, soaring through the air with all the speed of Gear Second. Halfway across the gap, his feet slapped out onto the ocean, and a mighty hole in the sea burst downward as he kicked off once, back into the air.
The man at the port gunwales opened his mouth to let out a shout of alarm. Luffy's foot impacted with his chest with the speed of a runaway train before he could, sending him rocketing off into the distance with a fading scream of pain.
The other three fishmen on the deck whirled about in shock. "What the-!?"
"JET WHIP!" Luffy's foot slammed into the face of the speaker. He slammed into the ocean with the force of a cannonball, before bouncing back up and skipping limply across the ocean like a stone.
"WE'RE UNDER ATTACK! GET THE PASSENGERS OUT OF-"
"JET BULLET!" his fist slammed into the gut of the pufferfish speaker, sending him skyward; Luffy leaped faster than anyone could blink, and met him in the air. "AND JET AX!"
BOOM! The ocean roiled as the fishman punched straight downward, not to be seen again. Luffy immediately skipped off the air, meeting the deck in front of the last man. To the side, he could hear the cabin door open. "JET PISTOL!" BOOM! Two left.
"It's a human!" one of them shouted. "Bastard! We won't let-"
Instantly, luffy was there, his hands stretched out far behind him. "JET BAZOOKA!"
With a sharp whistle of displaced air, the two remaining fighters disappeared beyond the horizon. Luffy's face twisted in anger, head whipping around to the point below the deck where he could 'see' the final four fishmen were.
"Luffy, please, stop!"
His head jerked up at the voice. The spirit of Merry was perched on the brim of his straw hat, waving its' hands frantically in front of him. "Merry. Thank god, you're alright." He smiled, for just an instant, before hardening again. "Don't worry. I'll be done soon."
"No, stop! You don't understand!"
With a thought, Luffy's body disintegrated, seeping down through the deckboards and into the hold. Coming back together with a SNAP of air, he stormed through the hold, charging forward towards the forward cannon room. His hand snaked out, ripped open the door, and raised his hand to strike as a woman screamed -
The ship pitched to the side, hard, rolling nearly forty degrees in an instant. Luffy's footing slipped, and as he stumbled to the side, a barrel full of gunpowder soared through the air and punched through his head, splattering it against the wall in a spray of mist.
The gunpowder barrel slammed into the siding with a loud THUNK! And Luffy stumbled in place, momentarily headless. The instant his face reformed, the spirit of Merry was there, floating in front of him, hand outstretched.
SLAP!
The door to the cannon room moved in time with her incorporeal hand, and what her ghostly limb could not do, the sturdy wood could. The ship rolled back in the other direction, as Luffy's head spun around his neck 360 degrees.
"LISTEN TO ME!" Merry screamed, shrilly. The Klabautermann's form trembled and sparked with flickering lights bursting from the dark raincoat. "THEY ARE NOT YOUR ENEMY! YOU ARE BEING A BAD MAN RIGHT NOW!"
Luffy rolled back to a stable footing, even as his mouth slowly dropped open at the unexpected assault. Only when the slap of waves against the ship quieted, and the light filtered through to the room, did the situation become clear.
Huddled across the room, in large sackcloth robes, were four fishpeople. Two of them were small enough to clearly mark them as children. The one who scream, one of the adults, was clutching them close to her chest and chanting feverishly under her breath; Luffy could hear her words even from here. "Blessed Kings, Let the sea not darken and let the waves not roil your Children, for We are bound by the chains that hold the Anchor of Men aloft, Blessed Kings, as we keep your secrets in our hearts keep us in the palms of your hands, Blessed Kings…"
She were praying. Luffy's eyes widened.
"You're not with Arlong. You're not pirates… You're pilgrims."
It took the other two ships half an hour to catch up across the space that Luffy had bounded near-instantly. It took longer for the situation to be explained, and for a number of Kriegers to release themselves from their jobs and start sailing the Merry, as the Straw Hats all re-embarked on their flagship.
"Pilgrims?" Gin repeated, a confused note in his voice. "The fishmen have a god?"
"This is news to me, as well." Said Kuro, fingers folded in front of his mouth. "As far as I was aware, the people of the sea, fishmen and mermen both, were atheistic, focusing their devotion on their rulers in Ryugu instead."
"That's intentional." Said Luffy, slowly leaning back in his chair, around the dining room/meeting room table. "It's a clandestine religion. One of their tenets is that if any humans find out the true teachings, their saviors, who are referred to in 'mixed company' as 'the Blessed Kings', won't return. Faith is second only to Secrecy."
"... Whoops." Zoro deadpanned. "We just doomed them all to hell. Sorry 'bout that."
"So, wait." Usopp held up a hand. "If no humans are supposed to know about it, then how do you know?"
Luffy held up a hand limply in the air; it melted into a spray of mist. "I can go where no other human can." he said, flatly. "I'm very good at listening."
"... and you know where their site of pilgrimage was." Kuro finished. "Since you recognized them immediately."
"... yep." Luffy nodded, slowly. His eyes were pinched as he met Kuro's gaze. "My old home island. For them, they got solid proof that their god exists, and has now come back, about a decade ago. Caused an entire renaissance down there."
"... I see." Kuro nodded, slowly. His face bore the expression of somebody who just realized something significant.
"So what do we do with them?" Asked Sanji. The whole table turned to face him, seated at the opposite end of Luffy and slowly chewing on a gourmet sandwich. "Your home island isn't anywhere near here, right? If we're not taking them where they want to go, then what do we do with them? We can't take them with us to fight Arlong. They've got kids."
"Can't they just head back where they came from?" Gin asked. "Somebody go ask 'em that question, and we'll drop 'em off close by."
Luffy shook his head. "Tried. They won't tell us anything, and…" He grimaced. "I don't feel right trying to use Haki on them. I scared them bad enough already."
The table went silent, though only Zoro seemed to understand what was meant by the word 'Haki'. Usopp looked around at the pensive faces and laughed nervously. "Hey, hey! They're fishmen, right? They can just swim where they need to go! Just let them off and we can go back to chasing Nami!"
"..." Luffy shifted his gaze to Usopp, his expression sending a clear message of 'are you serious'. "Usopp, just what do you think it's like, swimming at the bottom of the ocean?"
"Uh…" Usopp faltered.
"It's dark. Very, very dark. And not every species can handle that dark. That's why they only make cities in the shallows or large sandbars, or when they've got light sources in the deep dark." He folded his arms. "And if they were travelling by ship, that means they probably have no idea where they're going. Arlong was escorting them." His face twisted into a rictus of anger. "Probably made a damn fortune off of them, too. Fleecing the pious and desperate…"
"So we're up shit creek." Gin finished, eyeing the hatch downwards. "Can't keep 'em, can't dump 'em, can't take 'em back… real mess."
Luffy sighed, and slumped back down in his chair. "Any ideas?"
Silence.
"Great." Luffy leaned forward, frowning. "Then… we take them with us, to Arlong Park. but they'll stay in the sturdiest place we have. Gin, does the ship have a few more bedrolls?"
"We got tons of 'em." He grinned crookedly. "We had a little bit of downsizing recently. Thought you heard."
"Then you can find a place to shack them up for the night." Luffy responded. "Not the main room, find somewhere private for the lady. How long has it been since your crew saw a girl?"
"HA!" Gin barked. "Too long."
"Then you get the point." Luffy settled backwards into his chair. "That's about it. Tomorrow, we should reach Arlong Park, if Kuro's navigator is right. When that happens, you sound off as soon as you see the park. I want eyes on it to see if Nami's in the area. If she's not, blast it into pieces." His eyes flashed dangerously. "I want it to be rubble before I ever set foot on the ground."
A tense silence spread across the meeting room.
"That's all I wanted to say. Anybody got anything else to report?"
"Yeah." Gin nodded, lazily raising his hand. "Pearl and the boys got one of the side-docks opened; pried it open from the outside, since we still ain't found if there's an opening to the topside. There's a buncha speedboats in dry-dock, and the shipwright says they're safe enough to ride."
"Nice!" Luffy grinned. "Little raiding parties. I like that."
"There's also plenty of room for regular ships in there. You wanna get the Merry shacked up there until we get the navigator back?"
"... Eh." Luffy shrugged. "Might as well. Merry will be fine for a day or two, and it'll be safer in there if Arlong wants to try anything with the currents."
Kuro's head jerked up. "Currents? What about the currents?"
"Don't worry about it. I'll handle it if it becomes relevant."
Kuro's head slowly lowered, eyes narrowed over his spectacles. "You mention 'fishmen' and 'trying something with the currents' in the same sentence, and then tell me to not worry. That's the exact opposite of calming."
"Believe me. Don't worry about it." Luffy laced his fingers across the back of his head, leaning back. "That's about it, then. You can leave if you want." A grin spread back onto his face. "Sanji, when's lunch!?"
"Two hours. Hold your damn horses."
"Muuuuuu… Sanji is stingy…"
Luffy spent the night on the wreck, sleeping at the head of the hastily-repaired staircase to the helm, where the fishmen pilgrims had been roomed. None of the Kriegers tried anything; he didn't expect them to, but it was as much for their guests' sense of safety as it was for enforcement of the rules.
The sun was high in the sky by the time he stepped out onto the metal deck, staring across the span of ocean to the slowly growing speck of color against the island chain. Luffy reached behind his neck and firmly placed his straw hat on his head, scowling.
"You sure about this, kid?" Roger asked, immaterial behind him. "There's a lot of moving parts on that island. You think just showing up and blasting it to pieces will get Nami back?"
"Why wouldn't it?" Luffy asked, darkly. "Arlong's been on my shortlist from the moment I realized I had a shortlist. Because of him and the people who learned from him, Nami doesn't have a mom, and Ryugu is missing both their queen and a lasting peace between the races. The world is a better place when he's been turned into a pile of chum."
"And what about the collateral damage, then?" Roger responded, quickly and insistently. "You're okay with Hatchan getting caught in the blast radius?"
Luffy stiffened, just a little, before relaxing. "Hatchan being a good guy doesn't mean that we stop." He said, in a low voice. "We'd probably end up better friends at Sabaody if we never even fight here in the first place."
"You're acting like a damn fool." Roger growled. "You think Merry decided to push back against you just because you were about to pummel some civilians? Don't try and bullshit me and say you're not sailing her because Nami's missing; you're here on this wreck and not on your own ship because you don't want to hear what she has to say about the way you've been acting." Luffy's fists clenched, hard enough enough that the entire fingers turned white. "Something's different, here, and everything we've seen is screaming it in your face, but you're too caught up in your own self-righteous hatred to see it. You don't want justice, you want revenge."
"Justice is for the Marines." Luffy snarled. "Justice is what got my brother - got everybody I ever knew - killed. I'm a pirate; I don't have to be the good guy."
"Then let me put it another way." Roger snapped. "You don't care about being correct. You're doing whatever you feel like because that's what gets you off. You're chasing your own selfish revenge, even if it means you potentially chase Nami off the crew forever. I thought we were done with this after the Mihawk fiasco, but you just keep ruining second chance after second chance, because you're nothing but the scared traumatized brat I met twenty-five years ago. You haven't grown at all."
"Fuck you, Roger." Luffy stomped forward. "If you're so smart, then how come you're the dead man and I'm the one with a god's help?"
"You little-"
"READY THE BIG GUN!" Luffy roared, cutting Roger off. "Get Arlong Park in the sights!"
"You're a fool." Roger turned his immaterial head and spat; a wad of phlegm appeared out of thin air and sailed overhead into the ocean. "And I won't be a part of your ignorance. You're on your own. I'll be waiting here with a clock in my hand, waiting for you to come crawling back asking when it is you need to reset back to."
Luffy felt his mentor's presence fade with the sun. "And I'll be here, putting an end to the tragedies you wouldn't let me prevent." he barked back, before marching towards the 'neck' of the ship. "How long until we're ready to fire?"
"She's touchy, captain!" the gunner responded, pulling at rusted levers. "We've only got one shot, and that's because it was loaded before she went down for the long drink!"
"Then take the time to not miss." He replied, folding his hands behind his back. "Get Usopp to help. He's great at that kind of stuff."
"Aye-Aye!" The man rushed off across the deck. Luffy turned away and walked, slowly, to the edge of the deck. He glared outwards, at the growing speck of color on the shoreline.
Arlong Park was bigger, now; there was no doubt in his mind about that. The sea-gates reached higher into the sky, with a double-layer of iron doors, and the bricks were inlaid with streaks of gold, and red-white coral. A second, towering building stood next to the first, half-finished with the wooden bones and struts still visible. The walls were lined with firepower, with 24-pound swivel cannons placed at intervals; the cannons moved under their own power, suggesting some sort of automation controlling them.
"The place is a damn fortress, now." Luffy muttered. "Ripping the faithful off looks like good business." He quickly walked over to the watchman, holding a telescope in his hand. "Do you see her?"
"I don't, captain." He held out the item, which Luffy took from his hands and lifted to his own eyes. "It's not empty, though."
Through the instrument, Luffy traced his gaze over the park. It was, at the same time, both busy and rather empty. "... there's not very many people in there, for the size." He muttered, under his breath, "but at the same time I don't recognize any of the people. Arlong expanded his crew, even without leaving the island…?"
His gaze swept up to the top room of the window of the fifth floor room, that room that Luffy knew was the map room he had personally destroyed -
Arlong was there at the window, staring directly at Luffy in the eyes, miles away. The Straw Hat stiffened, involuntarily.
Arlong's eyes flickered to vertical slits, just for a second, before reverting to normal. He grinned, lifted a webbed hand in the air, thumb jutting outwards, and drew it slowly across his throat.
Luffy snarled. "Bastard…!"
Arlong's lips started moving. 'I know you can see me, Human.' he mimed, from miles away. 'You're too obvious to be my real enemy, but you're still trespassing in my turf. Because I'm a nice guy, and I'm busy dealing with other punks, I'll give you one chance. Turn around now, and I won't kill all of you.'
The spyglass nearly fell from Luffy's limp hands, before his fist reformed, and the metal tool creaked under the grip. "That a fact?" Said Luffy, his lips moving in an exaggerated fashion. "A chance to live and let live. So generous. Did Nami's mom get the same offer?"
Arlong turned his head to the side, as if listening to someone else, before his entire body rocked backwards, almost like being physically struck. His head snapped back to meet Luffy's far-away gaze, eyes instantly bloodshot and entirely vertical, like a feral beast. Veins bulged from his neck and travelled downwards, into the hemline of his - uncharacteristically, fully buttoned all the way up to his neck - floral-patterned shirt. 'So you wanna die, huh?' he mouthed, lips twisting into a snarl. 'I won't let you stop what we're doing here, even if you know Nami. Beg for forgiveness from the bottom of the ocean.'
Luffy lowered the tool from his eyes, handing it back to the watchman. "Looks like the surrender talks have failed." he quipped. "USOPP! How's the cannon coming?"
"Adjustments complete!" the sharpshooter called back.
"And the Black Cats?"
"Kuro's signalled they're all lined up as well! They're ready for a broadside whenever you say so!"
"Understood." Luffy reached down into his belt and pulled out a single flintlock pistol, the same he had pulled from the wall of commander Morgan's fortress, and held it in the air. "On my shot, fire on Arlong Park! READY… AIM… FI-"
A deafening crash interrupted him, and the massive ship pitched forward sharply into the water. Countless Kriegers, not ready for the movement, went sailing off into the water screaming, as a massive dark shadow formed underneath the floating fortress. Luffy himself pitched forward off the edge of the deck, until he flipped himself upright and slammed his foot down on the surface of the ocean like a solid object.
Underneath him, the dark shadow grew more distinct, until Mohmoo, the massive sea cow of the Arlong Pirates, burst from the water with a wordless scream of fury. One of the Krieg Pirates let out a howl of pain and fear, as he was swallowed whole by the carnivorous beast.
"MOHMOO!" Luffy shouted. "You better spit - agh! PISTOL!" his fist snapped back lightning fast into the sea beast's belly, and with a howl of pain, Mohmoo flew backwards into the ocean, spitting the pirate back out covered in digestive juices. "I slapped you once, you stupid cow, and I'll do it again!" he called. "You better run away while you still can!"
The shadow in the water flipped about, and charged forward. Luffy leaped to the side, but the figure spun on a dime, and slammed it's fat tail into Luffy's torso, splatting him into ocean spray. As he reformed, the sea cow breached the ocean once more, and body-slammed the deck of the World Pirates' unnamed ship, flipping it nearly forty-five degrees in the water.
"What the hell-!" Luffy exclaimed, before gritting his teeth. "Alright you stupid cow, you asked for it! GATLING!" three translucent pairs of arms burst from his back, and as one, they punched faster than the eyes could see, slamming over and over and over into Mohmoo's side, until the Sea Cow went down into the spray and did not resurface. Luffy dropped back to the ocean surface, and his extra arms disappeared. "Why didn't he run?" he asked aloud -
The ocean roiled, and dropped out from underneath his feet. Luffy plunged down below the surface, before quickly righting himself. His eyes widened. A massive whirlpool had formed, as half a dozen Fishmen and Mermen threw boulder after boulder down into the middle of the sea. Mohmoo, too, was there, and astonishingly, he was shaking himself off and righting himself, even as a massive swelling bruise formed on his head.
"What the- You're one of them!" One of the fishmen shouted; the prominent tattoo of the Arlong Pirates was visible on his scaly upper bicep. "Mohmoo! Deal with the big ship! We'll get the other one!"
"MROOOOOOH!" the Sea Cow roared; only now that Luffy had a full view of him could he tell that the sea cow, who he distinctly remembered as a complete coward and weakling, was covered in scars, and had half of one of it's horns broken off jaggedly. The Sea Beast rushed off to the surface, as the pirate fishmen soared forward through the water.
Luffy smirked. "Idiots." he swept his hands out, and a massive hand appeared. The Straw hat swung his own down, slamming it's oversized palm into the cluster of fishmen and crushing them into the ocean floor. The hand faded, and Luffy rushed forward towards the epicenter of the whirlpool tended by the mermen -
Without warning, a thin black tether wrapped around Luffy's midsection, jerking him to a sudden stop before whirling him around backwards. "Fishman Karate: Black Arm SLEDGE!"
A huge, blackened bone fin slammed into Luffy's neck, blasting the air from his lungs and sending him rocketing down into the stony seafloor. A small cloud of blood billowed from his mouth, dirtying the water around him. Luffy had only a moment to recognize the one attacking him - it was Kuroobi, face scarred more than he remembered, with Haki-blackened arms raised in a Fishman Karake kata - before the tether of hair wrapped around his waist jerked him back upwards, into the range of the fishman.
"Fishman Karate: Black-foot Back-foot JAWBREAKER!" his foot snapped up to slam into Luffy's jaw as he was snapped towards him - But Luffy's hands snapped up immediately, similarly blackened with Haki, and caught the foot mid-kick. Veins bulged from his forearms holding the attack in place, as Luffy glared in hatred.
"You dare?"
Instantly, the water around Kuroobi turned against him. Invisible hands gripped him by every limb, and he slammed down into the seabed, again, and then again. Luffy rocketed down to his side, a watery leg already pre-stretched behind him. "WATER WHIP!" it snapped downward, rocketing into Kuroobi's back with the speed of a runaway train. The water turned cloudy red.
A howling roar, and a dark shadow passed over Luffy, as the risen ship sailed overhead as Mohmoo continuously slammed into it, driving it forward. Luffy snarled, as his eyes quickly glanced between the Sea Beast, and the still-raging whirlpool that was sucking the Bezan Black to a watery grave. "You damn beef slab!" a spiral of water formed beneath his feet, and he shot forward -
"THOUSAND BRICK FIST!"
A concentrated blast of force tore through Luffy's exposed back. A sharp cry of pain escaped his lips as he shot upward, driven by the attack, until he breached the surface and soared into the sky. Chasing after him, into the sky, was a pillar of water as wide across as Luffy was tall.
Luffy whirled about mid-air, raised his hand, and slapped the entire pillar away like it was a gnat. There, suspended mid-air, he could see the ambush clearly. The Bezan Black was nearly halfway down the funnel, but even as they went down, Kuro was still on the deck, shouting orders. As they passed the meridian, and the portside cannons came level with Arlong Park, he roared a command, and as one the cannons fired, slamming in unified manner into the gates of Arlong Park, shattering the metal barrier.
With the birds-eye view, it also became clear what Mohmoo was doing. The sea cow was both trying to capsize the ship by unbalancing it with it's own massive body-slams, and trying to drive it aground if it was unable to do that. Every attack it made shook the aim of the massive cannon, preventing a clean shot, and sent it skittering across the waves like a skipping stone towards the shore of a distant village. With every attack, the sailors on board clutched dearly to whatever handholds they had, trying their hardest not to fall in.
Luffy could see Usopp from his vantage point, clinging to the controls for the massive cannon for dear life and screaming his head off. But even with what Luffy knew must have been abject terror nearly crippling him, Usopp was still pulling on levers and pushing rusted buttons, still adjusting the cannon to get a clean shot at Arlong Park. all at once, the cannon let out a deafening 'CLUNK!', and rolled back. Usopp grinned, pulled himself to a big red button, lifted his fist -
Mohmoo's tail slammed into the underside of the ship's neck, sending Usopp's area skyward. The sharpshooter screeched and lost his footing, tumbling over backwards across the deck, until Mohmoo immediately followed up the tail-slap with another shattering body-slam. The teenager was airborne, flying through the air, directly towards Mohmoo's gaping maw.
Luffy saw red.
"ENOUGH!" he bellowed, as the air around him turned to static. Waves of pure force exploded from his body like a bomb went off, as the unstoppable Conqueror's Haki attacked every living being without discrimination. Mohmoo froze in place, before tumbling to the side, foaming from the mouth. Fishmen and Mermen floated up to the surface of the ocean, hanging limply face-down in the water. Usopp plunged into the water, unmoving, as the previously-panicked Krieg Pirates fell to the deck and did not rise.
Luffy's eyes widened. "SHIT!" instantly, the force holding him mid-air cut out, and he plunged downward with his hands outstretched in a dive, piercing through the water. Usopp slowly sank down, unmoving, until Luffy's hands caught him and twisted in place, and a spherical bubble of air formed around his head. Luffy's head jerked up to the still-spinning whirlpool. "Fuck fuck fuck, I just knocked out Kuro and the crew, didn't I, shit! Not enough time to move the rock, and Usopp is - dammit…! ROGER!"
The King of the Pirates didn't materialize at his side.
Luffy's scowl deepened. "You little bastard…! FINE! Then I'll do it my way!" Spiralling water formed underneath his legs and burst him through the water, until he breached the surface, arcing through the air and landing on the deck of the Bezan Black, now nearly at the destructive center of the whirlpool.
Luffy quickly but gently placed Usopp on the deck, noting absently that there were pirates draped over the starboard cannons with strikers, as if they were preparing for one final broadside from the opposite end before being sunk. The Straw Hat pushed it from his mind, and lifted his hands as clenched fists, and pushed.
Suddenly, the destructive center that the whirlpool was formed around disappeared with a loud 'PLUGK!' sound. As Luffy's frown deepened, the ship continued to spiral around the depression in the sea, but slowly began to rise as the whirlpool faded.
Until, suddenly, the center of the whirlpool bulged fifteen feet upwards. Before the time-traveller could react to the unexpected interplay of his power tested against strange fluid dynamics, the whirlpool rippled unevenly, and with a quiet roar inverted with violent force, launching the Bezan Black flying through the air.
"SHIIIIIT!" Luffy shouted, dashing across the deck as the ship flew through the air, at a fast clip. As he dashed across the ship, his eyes caught on the angle of their movement - it would be mere seconds until they were flying nearly directly over Arlong Park, and they were tilting slightly with the movement so the starboard cannons were aimed downward.
Eyes flashing with insight, Luffy dashed across the deck to the cannon-line, pulling disembodied limbs from the air. As one, he and his copied hands snatched the tinder boxes from the unconscious Black Cat gunners and struck the fuse on the already-loaded cannons. The fuses burned down to the powder, at the same time as they passed directly over the tower of the main Arlong Park building.
BOOM! The airborne broadside blasted downward, shattering the Arlong Park building in half, engulfing the room that he saw Arlong inside of in explosive flames. At the same time, the flying ship jerked wildly midair and began spinning out of control, missing any kind of brace against the back-blasted force. All around him, men spun away from the ship, flying across the island with violent force. Luffy only realized the gravity of his mistake when he saw Kuro flung limply across the length of the ship, disappearing into the deep forest of the island.
"NO!" he shouted, dashing across the upside-down ship to snatch at the outstretched leg of Sanji, only to slip through his fingers and disappear into a completely different direction. His head whipped around, and watched helplessly as an unconscious Zoro and Usopp fly off into the air, before disappearing from sight as the ship spun around yet again to block his view. "NO NO NO!"
His skin blasted into translucence, and from thin air two massive hands formed and slapped against the sides of the cartwheeling vessel. With a loud groan of wood underneath an inhuman grip, the ship was tilted to uprightness in air, even as it continued to sail over the treetops uncontrollably. Sweating uncontrollably, Luffy gritted his teeth and twisted his head. A third hand formed underneath the keel of the ship and pressed upwards gently, struggling to keep the vessel from crashing down into the canopy.
The Bezan Black careened on, sails flapping and dragging against the momentum, as Luffy's strength faded, and his skin took on the appearance of dry parchment. The hands slowly faded, and the ship began to drift downwards once more. A branch cracked and broke against the hull.
Finally, the strain was too much, and Luffy's emergency Cloudburst failed. The hands disappeared into nothing, and the ship dropped, as Luffy's legs collapsed. His head bounced against the deck with a loud THUMP! The last thing he heard was the sounds of wood slapping against water, and then he knew nothing more.
End of Chapter 12, Remastered.
Notable Remastering Changes:
The Doomed Luffy was new, considering I hadn't gotten around to introducing those the first time I wrote this story (Yes, I had planned to make those a thing a long time ago. I never got around to the point in the story where I would have used them, though. Now that I'm throwing everything out the window, they get moved forward so it doesn't seem like so much of an ass-pull)
The Going Merry scene, and everything attached to it, is new.
The ambush is new.
Author's Notes:
Hello, boys and girls, and welcome to Mister Bones' Wild Ride. That's right, we're throwing canon completely out the window today. You have absolutely no idea where I'm going to take this arc, now. Luffy's done quite a bit more than flap a butterfly's wings with all of his BS, after all.
This is the first arc where it's going to be obvious that one of my internal subtitles/nicknames for this new, remastered version of this story is 'One Piece: Hard Mode edition'. I feel as though one of the fundamental rules for doing any kind of Time Travel/OP main character story, especially if you combine the two, is that you ramp up the difficulty accordingly for all of the advantages he now has. As emotionally cathartic as it is to see a character you like so much blast through issues that caused pain and strife in the original version, it's because of that bad situation that you came to love them in the first place.
One of the most important tools that an author has is Suffering. We are, by nature and by nurture, sadistic people. We torture the ones we love the most, namely the characters that have sprung from our brains and the brains of others. That doesn't mean we don't want them to have a happy ending at the, well, end. But nobody ever went on the Hero's Journey because life was treating them pretty alright, did they? Without suffering, there is no growth of the spirit, and without growth, there are no compelling stories.
If the sun was always shining and our load always light, we'd be shaking like a leaf with every god-given night, and we'd break under the weight of any pressure that was ever applied.
We're gonna have fun in Arlong Park, I think. It's a lot better than my first version of it.
Thank you for reading my story.
The Animaniac Dude
