Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece.
KNOW YOUR WORTH
chapter one
She remembers it vividly, still on this day. (Someone could say she's lifetimes away from that event, but to her mind it feels like only a few years have passed.) She knows the children at the village don't like her and the Mayor, for some reason she doesn't comprehend (she blames her grandfather's genes and his hard fists that somehow always finding a way to bump on her head), glares at her like she's the devil's spawn.
She doesn't care much, life has never been easy for her; she glances down from her place on her grandfather's shoulder. He's whistling a happy tune, his rough hands set on her knees to make sure she doesn't fall off. Again.
He's a strange man, that much she can say. She has never met anyone like him and she thinks she wouldn't have loathed his presence in the past either; he's prideful and super busy with his work (she still doesn't know what his job is, but he always leaves on a ship when he can't stay with her), but he tries for her. It's her fourth birthday today and he made sure to take the week off from work, so she's happy.
The other kids from the village don't like her. The boys won't hang out with her because she's a girl (something that makes her want to slam her head on the nearest walls, because really?) and the girls think she's too rowdy. She is, she knows it.
This strange life came to her with a strange life and an even stranger body. She's way too strong for a toddler and most times she ends up hurting the other children from town without wanting to. She closes up, resorting to reading the books her Gramps brings home from his travels and hanging out with the nice bartender from the restaurant just a few doors over.
It's a strange world, the one she's ended up in. It has big monsters and the land to water ratio is just messed up, but she can deal with it. Life in the village is boring and there's nothing apart from the big tomes her Gramps brings back to stimulate her brain, so she starts her own game.
She doesn't feel guilty about it. Playing with people's mind is something she has always enjoyed and when she does it she's reminded of a different time, when she was a simple woman looking for attention. She still craves attention and she's glad that, however hard it may be, her Gramps always try to give it to her.
"What are you thinking about?" he squeezes her knee and she looks down to him, her back bending weirdly so that she can see his dark eyes. She's starting to put the pieces together, of who she really is and the importance she holds in this world.
She's going to lead her own life though, because she always does what she wants and there's no one who can stop her. She sends him a blinding smile, the same one she knows makes her eyes shine and her grandfather's heart swell; she should feel guilty, because she's playing with people's life as if they don't matter.
But the thing is, that they don't. So she shrugs, her tanned shoulders bobbing up and down in a way she knows makes her look cute. "When will you take me out to sea with you?" her voice is whiny and her rosy lips are in a petulant pout. The man looks at her and she can see the change in his expression, but it settles back into that same bedazzling grin she was gifted with.
If she was a different person, she wouldn't have caught it. But she's not, because she's smart and manipulative and her past is filled with emotional games and different masks. Her future will be the same, because she's never been prone to change anyway.
The look he had in his eyes unsettles her though, because for a moment it seems like he was seeing right through her tricks, through her. His smile though is sweet and something she knows he saves for her and only her. She likes that, because she's possessive over her chess pieces. She's possessive over everything she likes and, once upon a time, she perceived it as a bad quality.
She's not prone to change but she's changed, she's more mature and she cares less and less as the days pass.
(The man is hers, just as the nice bartender is. She protects what it's hers and she's the only one who can destroy them. She won't let others near them because they're hers and if they have to perish it'll be by her hands only, not some pesky little pirate or a worms-for-brain mountain bandit.)
At night, when her grandfather is out to sea for work and the nice bartender sleeps in her own home, she dreams of the past.
She dreams of the first, a nice sweet girl who has been burned by love and friends many times over. She dreams of the day she was left there, standing alone and embarrassed in front of the many eyes' of her family friends. Then she dreams of the splash of water, the sound of the cars roaring into the streets as she falls in the river. The water in her lungs and the taste of mud on her tongue.
But then she dreams of her second and her third and her fourth and so on, and there she's different. She's still herself, the same nice silky black hair and big brown eyes. The sweet smile is still on her face, but behind it are knowing eyes and a wicked mind.
She doesn't blame anyone for the way she turned out. It's no one's fault but hers, and quite frankly she likes it. She likes feeling powerful, she's controlling and possessive and, hell, she's a bitch.
She likes it and people rarely dismiss her, because she has that air around her that is just so charming. She's gifted with the most dangerous ability in the world and she owns it freely, with well-thought words and a perfectly built mask always on her face.
No one notices, apart from her grandfather, and so she doesn't worry much because she knows he would give his life for her.
She's five and a half and she hasn't seen her gramps in a while. He's been relocated to another sea and it's ok, because she knows the pirates are soon going to dock at her village's port.
He's a nice looking man and she grumbles, because she wishes she was older. She wouldn't mind a tap of that, but she's barely six and even if he's a pirate, a supposed piece of trash, she knows he wouldn't dare.
She's glad for that, because she has never liked people like that. She enjoys hurting those kind of people and so she gives him sweet smiles when he gets off his ship, her eyes gleaming in the strong sunlight of her little island.
He crouches before her and a soft dimple appears as he grins at her and she thinks she might swoon. "Hi, d'you know a place where we could have a bite to eat?" His voice is smooth, almost honey-like and she wonders if all the people she will meet in this life are like him.
She nods at him, her wavy hair fluttering around in the wind, and grips his hand as she leads him to her nice bartender's inn. She ignores the scared look on the Mayor's face and the glare he attempts to send her way, because he's nothing to her. He's below her, just as all the other people in this place.
(The man whose hand she's gripping tightly isn't though, because he feels like power and freedom. He feels like her and she adores it.)
"What's your name?" he asks as he stumbles behind her, trying not to step on her tiny feet. She admires the way he's being with her, because even if she knows of him, actually meeting him is a completely different thing. He's nice and gentle, nothing like the rowdy pirate her memories pictured for her.
She wonders if it's because she's a female, or maybe because she's nothing like what she's supposed to be in this life. She dismisses the thought, because it's not like an outcome to her questions would change anything.
She grins at him, her tanned skin coloring pink on her cheeks and her big eyes wide.
"I'm Luffy, nice to meet ya!"
Hello! This is a Semi SI of sorts as fem!Luffy! For the moment it'll follow canon's timeline, however I want to try and spice things up a bit. I hope you enjoyed reading this first chapter and please review to let me know what you think about it! I know this chapter is pretty short but I wanna know if this might interest you before bending back and forward to write more lmao.
See u soon (probably with an update for COTG)