Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece

Sorry for the long wait for this chapter; I was spending too much time writing other fanfictions and working. I guess I also stopped feeling the love for the series I used to but I always love a good OC adventure fanfiction for the series so why not continue making my own? Thank you and please enjoy.

X_X_X_X

Ask any of the villagers on Kuraigna and they'd tell you their water source was limited. Drinking it without filtering out the salt could lead to irreversible consequences, so it was imperative Yukine learned how to get the salt out boiling it in a huge pot after dragging the pot back on a trolley.

Once the water was heated and the salt evaporated, he bunked his head in to swallow it one gulp at a time before raising his head out of it. He knew he should have used his hands to slurp up the water instead of dunking his whole dirty head—soil on his face and bugs in his hair—but the water still tasted fresh.

Now he was ready for breakfast...facing his first morning not seeing his mother.

He tiptoed into a vacant room. There was a whole U-shaped white cupboard with half a dozen pull out drawers with a dozen ivory knobs, a big slid-in and out window over the cupboard, a stove with three dirty frying pans on top, and a square table with teal green plastic chairs.

Not only was it alienated from the smell of his mother, there was no sign of his father anywhere on the chair near the table. No plates on the counter nor any glasses or silverware.

Yakine opened the door to the pantry as there wasn't a refrigerator—his mind was perplexed with all the boxes of different colors and hard to read text.

He closed the door with a sigh only someone who lost at nattering could make.

He was a blink of an eye away from going outside and eating a stick—the only question was if he had to peel it before he boiled it in his pot of hot water.

The appropriate reaction to being hungry would be climbing a tree to try to find fruit; too bad all the trees were beech's that didn't produce the delicious nectars such as apples or clementine's. With a small amount of stride on his adventure to feed himself he walked out the door usually locked incase of travelers or him recklessly going outside to explore and commute to the forest.

He didn't know that in no time he'd meet his greatest friend.

X_X_X_X

When planning to live off the land one had to always brainstorm how they would scavenge their findings. Scuddy clouds and birds thinking about pooping on him were right above him.

For Yukine he lugged his meal around on a tarp with two sticks in both hands put inside two insertion holes. The search for his sticks—a whole one hundred 'n' six of them—took the distraught Yukine half an hour.

He was on his way back home, knees feeling like gelatin dessert and slits on the side of his fingers, when he heard a crying sound. It sounded like a native playing a tambourine with tears of sadness in his eyes. Normally Yukine didn't care about other people's problems as he believed people can solve their own muddles, but today wasn't a day he could just ignore the cries of someone in need.

He dropped the sticks and scuttle to the sound; his eyes fixated on the ground to avoid sharp sticks and root thorns sprouting out. He nimbly made it onsite to the voice.

He looked everywhere for a hint of another person whether he believed he was sprawled on the ground or dangling on a tree branch for dear life.

"Wait, didn't I hear something that wasn't human? Wasn't it more like an animal I was listening to?"

Yukine remembered with certainty once he changed his direction; looked closer at the trees and ground, he found the mewling whinner: a young coati.

Being close to it instead of far away where its soft whining reverberated through the forest was tranquil on his thematic membrane.

He saw an orphaned animal. He knew it was an orphan because their mothers wouldn't just leave them alone like this. They eat berries and insects, their parents didn't have to go far to find those in Kuraigna's beech forest—their were practically spider eggs laden all around the roots of the trees.

Wherever the parents were, it didn't stop Yukine from picking up the mewling coati and carry him back home without even giving it a second thought.

X_X_X_X

Yukine felt like the worst guardian of all trying to care for the infant coati without having any milk or fruit to feed to it; even the mother who left it alone in the woods was a better parent than him.

Yukine stopped feeling sorry for himself and decided to go into the dining room; cold but not inedible food waiting for him.

Eric and Elisha were sitting next to each other, heads down except for those fleeting moments they met eyes with each other, sometimes with a smile on their faces.

Cain on the other hand was pushing his food together with his knife and fork until he ate a long omelet with the two different foods.

Yukine askance his way next to Cain because being around the other two was too wholesome for his liking.

Yukine was about to have his first bite when an epiphany came to his head about what they should do next, and he hated that he couldn't turn his brain off almost as much as he hated not speaking about his ideas.

"Everyone, there is something I want to get off my chest, so no sarcastic remarks. I think if we are going to that docking and merchant island Loguetown we should be overt so we can be covert."

All three blinked in unison.

"Yukine, is this because we are wanted pirates?" Elisa asked. "Because I don't see how being overt will help, unless of course you plan for us to announce we are pirates and then assault the nearest marine. Because in towns like this one there is always marines."

Yukine let her finish before he gave her his belief.

"I was thinking more of wearing masks before we hop on that dingy and sail to Loguetown."

This had their attention.

"As Eric said: I spend more time at a desk than I do mingling with you three rowdy friends, so why don't I try making masks for all of us this time."

Eric looked so intrigued hearing Yukine's plan, his hand squeezing Elisha's. All that sweat in his face turned into a broad smile.

"Go for it. I knew you had it in you to be innovative."

Yukine went from askance to just embarrassed. But now, he finally got to have that first bite.

X_X_X_X

Yukine was the last one to wake up the next morning, which was bad because they were so close to land and therefore couldn't sail until he finished concocting at least four masks.

"Cain...Cain...CAIN!"

Cain got the message; Yukine was a genius who used it as an excuse to be lazy.

Cain carried supplies in, made food, and even helped open a window to help get out that musty smell from the dust and melted plastic. In the end each mask took a total of three thousand pieces of paper to construct them and lots of detail to make them look cool and different. There was Eric's mask which was black with a few golden lines and two small black horns protruding from its forehead. Elisa's mask which had the long snot and four jagged teeth of a dragon all emerald green with a few lines strewn in to look like whiskers. Cane's mask was a long tongued red demon with lots of black drawn to look like long hair. And Yukine's was of course a brown puppy looking mask.

Cain was astonished by them, but all he could mumble to express his jovial was "Not bad for the newcomer".

"Happy crew, happy piece and quiet." Yukine said before shoving the demon mask in Cain's arms. "Now try this on, if it isn't too much trouble."

Cain gave Yukine a little smirk before trying on the mask. He could see things easily despite how small the incisions to make the eyes were. He couldn't smell so well over the high threads in the interior, but he could see Yukine, now wearing his mask, only open and closing his mouth and swaying his arms.

"Yeah, yeah...these masks will do."

He coughed a little through his mouth hole.

And then...

"ERIC! ELISA! Get down here and try your masks on!"

X_X_X_X

The crew could still move around in their small dingy thanks to their foresight of keeping only four members of their crew.

Ryuko was a little timid hiding behind a cluster of rocks while his friends sailed to Loguetown, but the world wasn't ready to see him in his full height, sixty feet in height and over five hundred pounds in rock.

The crew took turns circling the dingy to wave goodbye to Ryuko until they were inches from the dock where ordinary sailors would get suspicious.

Cain was leering at the docks to see if there were any islanders who looked suspicious. He did see someone who came off as dubious.

He was seven foot tall, had a red shirt showing off his abs the way a lady would wear, black jeans with a blue belt, angular chin, orange eyes and pointed black hair that resembled a unicorn. But the strangest thing about him was the jar he was carrying. It was five inches in height and thirteen inches wide made of black graphite with a cookie jar lid with a laughing ghoul on the lid.

Cain was brought out of his stupor when the dingy finally reached the docks. Everyone was already doing their jobs at the dock. Eric was paying the dock manager to secure their dinghy while Elisa espied Yukine tying the rope around the mast.

Since he was brawny, he had the job of carrying the bags. He could carry three bags one-handed off the boat. Out of the six bags he had to lug around like he was the butler of the boat, only one of them had anything stuffed inside of it. When he took his first step off the boat he overheard Eric's chat with the boat manager.

"Did you buy this boat, rent it or build it yourself, Mr...Bron?"

"It was a gift from my grandmother," Eric lied; he stole it from his old village.

"It's thirty-three beli a day to have your dingy here. We promise in return for your payment that it will be under watch to make sure no one steals it and if any seagulls drop you-know-what on it...it will be cleaned for your return."

Eric had a dumbfounded look on his face. Cain didn't believe there was such a thing as stupid questions, but he was going to speak in such stupor he might as well just ramble dumb things that don't make any sense.

"What if I lost a leg and had to be in a hospital bed?"

"That would be unfortunate since we have your name and keep track of whether you sailed away with your boat or not, now we'd like that thirty-three now as a security for looking after your boat."

Eric just paid him with a fifty beli bill which in turn was pittance with four coins, he squeezed them imaging they were more important than they really were. The manager and him were still standing as the man scribbled on his board, then spiffed his hat before walking away.

Eric could now look at his crew who in turn were finishing knotting and putting the bags down—Cain not quite done but needed to put this crazy bag down. The nakama, now untethered from their tasks, joined in a four-coalesce circle.

"Okay, I think we should split up into two teams," Eric commanded.

"Last time we docked you had three of us travel together while one of us stayed to watch the boat," Cain interjected. "What's changed in your decision making?"

"Nice guy Bernal told me it's his job to look after our boat and clean off bird shit. The world might be discombobulate at the prospect of meeting Ryuko, but we just need to trust they can safeguard our dingy."

Yukine smiled at his optimism before congealing his mask to his face and then frolicked through the street acting like a clown. Cain watched him, saw the demeaned looks he was getting from people watching, then looked at his two friends, smiled.

"It's great to see he has an entertaining side, but why didn't he just turn into a small monkey and make a music box so we could fit in more...candidly?"

Cain decided to himself he should be the one to follow Yukine in this town to make sure he didn't get hurt...or worse...in trouble.

When he caught up to him he saw he was still making a total ass of himself; and he used that word thoughtfully. He was jumping around and exclaiming avidly he was there for everyone to see, an ass.

During his excitement he passed by two girls who looked like they came from a well off family. Both had very glossy hair extending to their shoulders, red lipstick, one had black hair and the other was dirty blonde, the blond one wearing ablue dress and the black hair girl wearing a red dress, and they both had pearls around their necks. It was embarrassing just walking by two attractive girls, but they were transfixed on Yukine before just walking away from him; so overt it was covert.

To not add any rift to their conversation, he waited until he was close to him before talking to him.

"Hey Yukine."

Yukine didn't answer him.

"We are wearing identical masks; there's no harm in us speaking together."

"It's not that," he replied. His voice was a little gruffy but his expressions were obscured by his mask.

"I think we are being followed—a waste of hard work. Don't turn around, guy with a jar in his hands."

Cain saw him too. He wasn't sure who that man worked for. He wasn't even sure why he was following them, they were nobodies.

Maybe this was all just a funny misunderstanding and he was just walking behind them with the rest of the flurries. Either way they needed to gather their supplies, and Yukine tugged on his arm to the nearest grocery store.

Cain walked in first while Yukine counted to one hundred 'n' sixty-nine before walking in after. They were across each other looking at sundries they didn't need instead of the produce they did, tapping their feet—their own morse code.

"Good job taking off your mask, Yukine. How did you know there was someone following us wearing that thing?"

"I made the backs see-through. All I had to do was turn the mask ninety-degrees."

"Good idea. I'll try that when I leave."

After talking, Cain paid for the produce and left with it stored in a paper bag.

Yukine left after him, or at least he would have if the door would open. He tried jiggling it, pushing on it, and kicking it but the door remained shut. He was trapped like a bird in a cage, he hoped whoever did this didn't notice how visible his fear was. He turned to the store manager; a lopsided smile on his face and a rat-scratch of blood bisected on his lower lip. He was wearing a brown vest with a red tie, white sleeves, and shaggy brown hair with green eyes.

Yukine made his approach in a nonchalant fashion acting as if he just dropped a penny from his pocket until barbarously loping towards the owner and squeezing him around his collar.

"What's the big idea? Why isn't your door opening? I demand you-"

A lump protruded on the side of the manager's head. It looked like a balloon inflated in his body, and for a fleeting moment it was astonishing from a scientific perspective, but all that curiosity was shattered when the lump exploded sputtering the wall with red visceral. All of Yukine's hopes the enemy didn't notice his fears flew out the window when he unleashed a panicked scream.

The body of the manager collapsed and in his hands a rough note with words scrawled all over billowed on the way down, more bubbles inflating from his body before he exploded on the ground.

Just when Yukine thought things couldn't get any creepier, he heard laughter in the store.

"Braheawaahahaha!"

The sound reverberating in the store made Yukine shiver. He was in a store of shattered windows, a voice cackled at him he didn't know, and a mop twitched without anyone touching it. His heart would tell him to stand tall and roar at his adversary, but his mind didn't like the outcome.

Without a twitch of hesitation, he rushed to the shattered window, transformed into a small piddling monkey form and squeezed through the window making his way in the streets of Loguetown.

Very cowardly—he was aware of his cowardice while morphing back into a man and hotfooting away.

He wasn't a hero, just the black sheep in a crew of boisterous fools.

Flashback:

Yukine at the age of eleven—three weeks of caring for the coati baby. He ventured into the woods with a zokin cloth and a basket. He picked the fruit with the cloth, lots of stub twigs that could poke right in his skin, and managed to hurl them right in the basket. He usually only reached and plucked two dacamus from just one tree, but today he felt like treating his baby he called Hanima with six dacamus from two different trees.

Yukine would remember this sad day of his life ironically skipping back like a giddy girl; all he was missing was a cape billowing in the wind.

When he saw the exterior of his house he double checked the six dacamus nestled like birds in his basket.

The first whiff he smelled was the smell of something sizzling like the backside of a pig leg.

Yukine was shocked—his father had been too depressed to cook for some time. He dragged himself to the dinner room, smoke roiled out of a pan broiling over the scrubbed rusty stove polished with white paint to make it look only slightly used. Yukine was thankful he was a genius—saved him the horror of guilt.

He recognized the cooked body was his friend; saved him the penitence of having eaten his skinned flesh.

Yukine's body flitted from the door to the table, sat down, choked "I don't want any dinner, father."

His father looked at him with sorrowful eyes, flitted to his hands.

"What we're eating is your friend? I found this thing with its neck trapped in the mouth of a fox. I commemorate your kind-heart raising it and nursing it but the law of survival says a dead animal is anyone's dinner; even you and I . Take a deep breath and eat; meat may be overrated but no one will despise you for eating it after three days of starving."

Even with that speech Yukine never ate a bite of the coati baby...started to feel like his baby.

X_X_X_X

The day he would meet Eric, Elisa, and Cain a storm was raging through the sea towering with black turmoil, and sailors askance pirates alike were making a rush to part their boats on dry land. Elisa, Eric and Cain came sailing on the rough, rocky side of a stone mistaken for a raft in the confusion of the storm.

Yukine hotfooted to the shore where the trio had docked.

"We've been sailing for three days," Cain complained in a reeling motion.

"And we lost all our beli." Elisa reminded.

"We'll be okay," Eric told them. "I'll wrangle us up a boar-"

"Or maybe you can just stay and let me off you my food."

Yukine slid down a cliff with a zokin cloth wrapped around a box. On the way down he threw it on a thin tree; plucked clean. He reached the bottom still sliding on the dirt, walked on the sand.

"You three are going to be so screwed if you don't hear what I have to say," he said blatantly. "This island has airborne virus your not immune too. Food here is scarce and the only drinkable water we have is inside a fruit. In Layman's term, if you haven't learned to live off the land here you won't last a day. Fortunately for you three I'm in need of a Devil Fruit with great outcome in my dreary life."

Eric blinked.

"I'm sorry, who are you?"

"I'm scowling...now I'm glaring...and now I'm deadpanning you—I'm just the guy who can keep you alive for one day and dangerous work."

Elisa, who just stood in the background, guffawed. "Please."

She raised her arm before a wooden stake fired out at the tree. It shattered into splinters pattering on the cliffside to the ground. And before Yukine could retrieve it, Cain moved like a lion chasing its prey grabbing it; then he caromed back to his crew. They coalesced in an orifice-triangle position; giggling while stripping the cloth from the box.

Yukine looked at them completely baffled and defeated. He collapsed with his legs crossed and his arms stretched out. Tears streamed from his eyes to his cheeks dripping all over the sand.

"Why...I pondered this plan for two weeks. How can it just fail this miserably?"

"Because being a loner who thinks so much about things makes you antisocial, not a genius," Elisa said, her right hand squeezing's three fingers on a chicken wrap with a tomato wedged inside.

She sauntered her way up to the bray tear-soaked visitor. And then—she held it close to his mouth.

"You made this tasty food-"

"He bought it actually," Cain guffawed. "A good chef always knows the moist texture of their food and this tastes like it came from a bakery—arable island my ass."

Elisa cleared her throat before reiterating what she was going to negotiate.

"Finish this up and we'll help you find this fruit your after."

"But Elisa, we don't even know him," Eric hollered.

"Eric is on to something for once. For all we know he's a power hungry bastard trying to use the power of the fruit to harm many people on his way to the Grand Line."

Elisa kept her eyes on Yukine, nibbling on his wrap, sniffing while trying to make his tears dry up.

"And were going to help him if he is because pirates don't pick sides between good and evil."