AN: All rights to their rightful owners, I don't own One Piece, nor do I own Attack on Titan
It was a bright day, perfect for sunbathing, loitering around without doing much, and, in Nami's case, perfect for sitting back in a comfortable chair in the shade of an umbrella, and enjoying the cool cocktail that Sanji made her.
She should have known it was too good to be true. When was it ever peaceful on the board of the Thousand Sunny? The answer was one she knew all too well: never. The first sign should have been the fact that even Luffy was silent, staring out at the sea contemplatively, and it was surprising she was even capable of such a thing.
The second sign should have been the change in the air. They were nearing a summer island, so it didn't surprise Nami to feel a storm coming, but the heaviness in the air promised more than a simple rainfall.
It was only an hour later when it started raining, and the crew was already prepared for it. What the crew wasn't prepared for, however, was Usopp shouting down from the crow's nest.
"Incoming boat at twelve o'clock!" he screamed.
"Marines?" Name shouted back.
"No! Just one guy on a small boat!" Usopp answered, and he sounded incredulous. "It's even too small to take an actual storm!"
Nami frowned, and next to her, Robin did as well. Twelve o'clock was the same direction as the island was. Was the boat here for them? But why would anyone come to greet them, when they were already heading towards said island? It just didn't make any sense whatsoever, especially with the dark clouds looming at the horizon.
She walked over to the front, unbothered by the increasingly frequent raindrops landing in her hair, after all, what kind of navigator would she be if a little rain bothered her? Well, that and she could hear Sanji scrambling after her, and she caught a glimpse of an umbrella in his hand.
Stopping near the figurehead, she could see that Usopp was indeed right: a boat was approaching them fast, barely big enough for the single person standing on top of it. He must have seen her from his boat, because he started waving at them. It appeared he really was heading for them. But what could he possibly want that was so urgent that he couldn't wait until they reached the island?
Luffy, who appeared right beside her a moment later, waved back cheerfully. "What a friendly guy!" she exclaimed with a grin. "I like him already!"
Nami rolled her eyes fondly, "Of course you would." She turned back towards the boat guy, who was apparently, if Luffy's observation haki was to be believed, a man.
"Why would someone come out here before such a storm?" Sanji wondered, holding an umbrella above the two girls with one hand, and shielding his cigarette in his mouth from the rain with another hand.
"That's what I want to know too," Nami shrugged, eyeing the approaching boat suspiciously.
"Well, we'll find out once he gets here!" Luffy exclaimed, bright as always. "Lower the ropes!"
"Yes captain," Zoro murmured in the background, his voice still hoarse from sleep. Nami was surprised he woke up at all, storm or no storm.
"B… b… but what if he is dangerous?" Usopp argued, his voice shaking as he stammered own the last of the few steps of the ladder to the crow's nest. "Maybe he is a bounty hunter! Or a marine admiral!"
"WHAT? A MARINE ADMIRAL?" exclaimed Chopper, and immediately he started running around in panic, until Robin caught him and lifted him up cheerfully.
"I doubt it," she told him placatingly. "Why would an admiral be here?"
"It would be super exciting!" Franky noted without any worry whatsoever.
Luffy's only answer was a cheerful laugh, while Sanji shook his head. "He doesn't feel dangerous."
The man arrived to the Sunny only a few minutes before the storm and climbed the ropes with practiced ease. He looked to be around fourty, with brown hair parted in the middle, and a thin moustache and goatee decorating his thin face. He was wearing big round glasses and had eyes that were smart enough that Nami was instantly wary of him. Luffy, however, had no such concerns. She bounced up to the newcomer without a moment of hesitation, greeting him with the loud exclamation of: "Hi, I'm Luffy, I'm going to be the Pirate King!"
The visitor just smiled, but it was a tense, unhappy smile, and the wary look he gave them all indicated he was all too aware that everyone on the board was eyeing him suspiciously. Everyone besides the captain. He opened his mouth to say something, but in that moment the deafening sound of thunder interrupted them. He looked up, slightly alarmed, and Nami rolled her eyes.
"Ourship can take it," she said, glaring at the visitor pointedly.
He got the message, and looked down, as if he was slightly ashamed for arriving with such a lousy boat. "I was counting on that," he admitted, scratching the back of his head. "My name is Yeager Grisha, and I'm here to ask for your help, Straw Hat Luffy."
Seated inside the kitchen with a nice cup of tea in her hand, Robin eyed the visitor carefully. He had an air of mystery around him, one that she couldn't quite decipher, and it bothered her to no end. He was obviously smart, she could see it in the calculating gazes he sent to everyone, but he was also desperate. Desperate enough to force their hand in talking to him by arriving before a storm in a small boat that would probably sink in no time.
Robin had a bad feeling about the man, and that made her feel positively elated about what he was about to say. And she wasn't the only one, beside her Luffy was a little ball of excitement, waiting on the edge of her seat, her eyes full of curiosity.
"Here," Sanji said, putting down a plate of sandwiches in front of them. "Nothing better than a little snack for serious conversations."
"Thank you," the man said honestly, taking a sandwich in his hand, but not taking a bite, just staring at it as if it was the first time he had ever seen one.
Luffy, who was already munching on her own sandwich, lost her patience in that moment. "So, are you going to tell us what you are here for or not, old-man Yogi?"
"It's Yaeger," he corrected absentmindedly, and shook his head. "And as I said I'm here for your help. It's to save a country from the hands of a dictator." He looked at Luffy pointedly. "I heard you like to do that, fifth emperor of the sea, beater of Crocodile, Wapol, Enel, Doflamingo, and who knows who else."
Immediately, the air changed in the room. Zoro slightly unsheathed his sword, Nami had her Clima Tact in her hand, Chopper changed into Kung Fu point, Usopp had his slingshot aimed at the man's head, and Luffy slightly narrowed her eyes. Robin herself could feel the itch to take up position to summon limbs in a moment's notice, but she ignored it. She was too curious.
"You sure know a lot," Luffy said, her eyes suddenly more calculating than anything, "For a man who we see for the first time today."
"I've been following your story from the beginning," the man admitted. "I've talked to people you've told your stories to, read newspapers, listened to gossips." He sighed tiredly. "From the moment I put two and two together and realized you beat crocodile and saved Alabasta, I realized you may be the one I've been looking for all this time."
"Oh," Luffy said, laughing out loud, and the tension immediately lessened, although Zoro didn't sheath his sword just yet, and Nami didn't put away her Clima Tact. "Alright then."
"Elaborate," Zoro said, his one eye narrowed in suspicion.
"A country… or I suppose now it's my country, it's suffering under horrible king, controlled by pigs who were bought by the World Government. And that's not all. The island is home to thousands of monsters called Titans," Robin could see Usopp and Luffy start to shake at the same time, one from fear and one from excitement, "and the people surrounded themselves by walls to protect themselves and believe that they are the only survivors of humanity and so they have no idea about the outside world." The man sighed again.
Robin could feel her anticipation build. That sounded like a horror novel, and she did love horror novels.
"What are these Titans?" She found herself asking.
"It's complicated," the man said thoughtfully. "and actually quite a long story."
Nami turned towards the window, looking outside on the rainfall. "We have nothing but time," she said calmly.
"Yes, tell us old man! I want to know!" Luffy exclaimed, her eyes full of excitement. "What monsters?"
"Well then," Grisha gripped his uneaten sandwich a little tighter. "What do you know about giant creating experiments?"
The mood in the room changed again. There was rage emanating from Nami and Chopper, and Robin herself felt a little bit of anger rise in her heart at the memory of the children experimented on, locked inside a room of rainbows.
"All too much," Nami snapped, her eyes promising a storm bigger than what was raging outside. "Why?"
"I'm a doctor," the visitor said after a moment. "And ten years ago, I started working with Vegapunk on an experiment with gigantification. We found out about a failed experiment from a hundred years ago, when the World Government attempted the same thing. They failed, spectacularly I might add, but that didn't stop them from trying for years and years, simply dumping the failed experiments on an island that rebelled against them. Those failed experiments are the Titans.
"And in what manner exactly," asked Sanji slowly, "did the experiment fail?"
The man stared at his sandwich. "While people did grow, they lost their mind. The result was half-giants with no humanity or intelligence, with only one goal: to consume humans."
Robin's fascination only grew, but she could sense the horror of the crew grow with it. Usopp uttered something along the lines of "Wait, they eat humans?" while Nami just gasped, and Sanji frowned, Brook laughed darkly and made a joke about shivers running down his spine, and Franky just muttered something like "that's not super."
"And you worked with that, old man?" Luffy asked simply, her eyes unreadable.
"We wanted to see if we could make it better," Grisha admitted. "But without experimenting on humans, of course."
Robin couldn't quite believe that, but she decided to let it go. The man obviously seemed remorseful, and there was nothing to be done about it now. "And could you make it better?" She asked instead.
The man looked at her with infinite sadness and remorse, a look she knew all too well. "We could. By adding devil fruits to the mix, we managed to make a serum that could make humans that could transform into intelligent Titans with added powers at will. Only, the serum wasn't stable. Administering it to someone would shorten their lifespan to about fifteen remaining years."
There was a contemplative silence in the room.
"We haven't heard of any successful giant creating experiments," Zoro said nonchalantly, "so I'm guessing the World Government didn't like it?"
"We never told them," the man admitted. "Vegapunk declared the experiment a failure. I, however, disagreed, and continued my work in secret. In the end I managed to create a stable formula." His voice wavered, and he frowned at the sandwich. "But I knew it was too dangerous, so I never told anyone. And then, there was a break in in my lab."
Chopper and Usopp gasped.
"That's terrible!" Chopper exclaimed, "What happened?"
"Somebody stole the five unstable serum we managed to make, "the man gritted his teeth, "But luckily, they didn't find the stable one. They did, however, find my notes that I managed to make one. And since apparently the Government wouldn't buy the unstable serum, they came after me, with the help of the government. So I ran, hiding where I hoped they wouldn't search for me: on the very island where the Titans live. After all, who in their right mind would hide there?" he sighed. "Unfortunately, they found me five years ago, and decided to take care of two problems at once. Using the unstable formula, they created soldiers, and used them to attack the humans on the island, breaking the wall."
There was a collective gasp from everyone in the room, although Robin had a suspicion that Luffy only gasped because everyone else did too. She, herself, felt horror rise in her. It reminded her all too much of a certain island.
"Half of the island's inhabitants died as a direct consequence, including my wife." There was a grief in his voice, one that people in the room knew all too well. "I administered the stable formula to my son, to protect him and to hide the serum, and ran away again to find help."
"Which is us," Zoro stated.
"wait, hold up," Usopp exclaimed, his unbelieving eyes set on the man. "Did you just say you administered the result of your experiment to your son?"
"Yeah, that's not super!" Franky agreed.
"Yohohoho, that's super cold even to me, and I don't feel cold."
"He lives in a world filled with human eating monsters," the man snapped. "It was the best way to protect him. I couldn't have escaped with my son, especially without leaving his friends behind."
"I understand," Robin said, because she really did. The man did his best to protect the ones he loved. "But what would you have us do?"
"The people on that island have a fighting chance now, with my son on their side," he took a careful bite from the sandwich. "But he isn't safe with the enemy shifters there. I need you to go there, infiltrate the country, find the shifters and dispose of them, and take care of the corrupt king and military as well. This way, the people there have a true chance at freedom."
"That's quite a lot you are asking," Nami said thoughtfully. "What's in it for us?"
The man stayed silent for a moment, before saying, "the island doesn't have much to give, neither do I. I have considerable medical knowledge that I can share with your doctor, or…"
"I want to go, captain," Robin interrupted the man's struggle. "I want to help them."
Luffy looked at her thoughtfully, before understanding flashed in her eyes. "Alright!" she said cheerfully. "Then we are going!"
"Just w…wait a mi…minute! Man eating monsters!" Usopp argued, "Let's think about this."
Luffy shook her head. "I've already decided,"
"i... don't know how to thank you," the man said tearfully. "Thank you so much. I'll owe you forever."
"Nah, I'm doing this cuz Robin wants to. She's my crew, so if she goes, I'm going too," Luffy smirked, and Robin smiled back. Luffy truly was the best captain.
"What's the plan?" she asked, turning towards the visitor. "Surely, you have one?"
"Well... First of all, it would be best if only a select few went," the man said, now eating his sandwich with fervor. "That would make the infiltration easier. Especially with how… colourful the crew is."
Luffy laughed, amd Robin had a sneaking suspicion she had no idea what the man meant. "I'm definitely going!" she exclaimed, "and Robin too!"
"And me," Sanji added with a serious face. "I'm not leaving two women alone on an island full of monsters!"
"And me," Zoro grinned, "I want to see these man-eating monsters."
"Wrll, no way I'm going," Nami shook her head. "I don't want any monsters near me!"
"Then it's decided! We are going to save your country and kick the ass of the king!" Luffy declared.
The man nodded, and for the first time since he appeared, an honest smile graced his face. "Thank you so much."
"Where to, then?" Nami asked, holding her hand out for either an eternal pose, or a vivre card. "We are obviously dropping you off."
The man handed him the latter. "It's a vivre card for my son. There is an added twist, though. The island is in the calm belt."
"It's WHAT?"