Chapter the Fifth- I Will Learn To Say Goodbye-

And that is why, child, they call Raftel the Island of Broken Dreams/
They do?
They don't?- /

Luffy's head hurts from wrapping it around the question. His mind was in the process of being poked and prodded by the One Piece, frantically searching his memories for something else to question him about.
So…
What happens now?
I can give you two choices/. One, I send you on a raft to the nearest Marine ship/. You get captured, executed, everyone remembers you as the Pirate King and your name goes down in history/. You join your nakama/
Is that what Gold Roger did?
Yes, but would you call him by his real name?- /
What?
Gol D. Roger/
That's a weird name.
I chose the nickname, and isn't it wonderful for the King of Pirates?- /
What's the other choice?

The One Piece grins, being entertained for the first time in two decades. This child was like a miniature version of his father.
I send you back in time, change one small event and you never meet your nakama/. You never make it to Raftel, and live out your life without remembering anything but that once upon a time you might have had other nakama/

There is a long silence as he tries to comprehend what never meeting his nakama will mean to him.It is inconceivable, for someone like him to understand what that entails. His heart understands, the pain of the feeling like there were others before in a different life. But his mind cannot.

Have you decided?- /
He stalls for time.
Tell me about Gold Roger.
It sighs. He was a man like you, only older/. It was my first time seeing a Human in hundreds of years/. Tell me, how old are you, child?- /
Nineteen. The One Piece knew long before he answered but refused to believe his childish mind.
But that would make you five years younger than the year in which Gol D. Roger was executed/. How could that be, unless you are not his child?- /


Logue Town. The hustle in the streets, the bustle in the alleyways.

A revolutionary that has shaken the World Government to its core slips the hood off his head and peers down at the smiling face in the Wanted poster he is holding. He grins, knowing that if he had not called to the lightning that forgotten day that boy would be dead by now.

Dragon cocks his head to the side.
"I wonder how my son is doing…"


His hand still touching the ancient treasure, he waits patiently as the One Piece reaches out to the world around it for the man that has slipped through its fingers.
Yes, Gol D. Roger is alive/
I don't get it. They killed him.
He had eaten an Akuma no mi/. It seems as though he defied me by keeping his life/
So he's alive?
Yes/. Undoubtedly/
I don't believe you.
Why not?- /
You killed my nakama.

A strange sort of pain stings the inside of his head as the One Piece strikes him. Why won't you let it go? You were supposed to die with them/. It is your fault for living/


But perhaps Gol D. Roger left a One Piece of his own. Two years, five years, does it make a difference to anyone? Not to a dead man, most certainly. Not to a dead man.

Children, treasure. There is no difference to the men that held them as they cried for the very first time. The former Pirate King laughs.


Portgas D. Ace pauses in the middle of his training regiment. He could have sworn he felt another voice laughing a porcelain laugh in his head, different and similar again.
You think all the weather in the Grand Line is natural?- / Do you, child, believe that the magnetic qualities of the islands, the Calm Belts, the Sea Kings- you must understand, child, I make them all/. I kill hundreds of pirates every day/. I must protect myself, and you understand?- /
No.

There is a long pause; the One Piece has lost its words. What?- /
You are a coward.
I am an object, I cannot be cowardly/
So many people give up their lives to find you, and now you tell me that there is no Pirate King, and all those people- and Shanks- and everyone-

He removes his hand from it and gives birth to a tiny, grimy fist. He brings it down on the One Piece, which responds with a rather stoic surface. The bones in the young captain's hands grind to powder from the force of the blow.
You cannot destroy me, child/. Give up this Pirate King nonsense/
I- will- never- ever…

Clutching his limp hand, his mind is abruptly surrendered to the angered treasure.

Child, I am no longer entertained by you, and so I will give you both choices/. You will bother me no longer/


Kuina's gravestone was cold and sodden that night. The students of the dojo, now famous for rearing such a legendary swordsman, swore they had seen her weeping for the man who had turned to piracy, whom she had loved so much. They put their swords down and turn to the heavy moon crying silver tears into the night sky.

Someone notes the second phantom, hazier and totally unexplainable to the human eye. There is only the green around his waist and the tanned arms around Kuina's neck as she cries, unintelligible clues to an inconceivable answer.

His ears pick up the gossip and rumour as he lights a candle in the memory of his daughter. He cries for the rest of the night.


The mikan shrivelled up and died that night. People whispered to one another that she was walking up and down the streets, red hair bouncing, smoke fuming from the edge of her mouth where a small fire burnt. The doors of her cottage creaked open and let fly a thousand tiny cranes made of old maps.

Someone spits on Arlong's grave for taking eight years from her and only returning three. It was a strange vision; how could a nonentity produce saliva? Was it the spirit of the dead woman, or her daughter? True, they noted, the mikan could prophesy strange things and their deaths could not be a significance of goodness.

She tosses her periwinkle locks out of her eyes and screams to the sea for stealing her sister's life.


The town was strangely silent that night. Three years had passed, yet the stillness had never been this awful; as if he had always been there proclaiming the imminent danger arriving in the middle of the night.

Someone turns and looks out the window, wondering why they had just heard a cry that pirates were heading in the direction of the town. Doors slam open, men brandish shovels and pots like the old times. They stare stupidly into nothing.

She is wailing to an empty tree branch, her illness returning with an emotion worse than anything she has ever felt.


The food turned sour in their mouths that night. It wasn't just the lack of the head chef who had retired early from his apparent age, but a strange emptiness that had taken the spirit from their hands and knives and dishes.

Someone gets up and tries, once again in a futile manner, to scrub old bloodstains out of the tables that had been there from before he left. The dining hall is spotless as though no one had ever challenged the taste of food in the restaurant. Smoke travels up into the atmosphere.

He rubs the stump where a leg once was and contemplates on what he has just lost; worse than any appendage one could dream of.


The snow stopped falling and interrupted a storm in its fury that night. A man who had been ill got up out of bed to see the phenomenon with his own eyes and realized that he was completely healed. He brushed the fur off his chest.

Someone rushes into town; breathless with the occurrence he has just seen with his very eyes. It brought up a strange conversation in one of the settlement's pubs: can a whole herd of reindeer suddenly develop allergies to snow, or are animals able to cry?

She has lost him for a second time; only this time there is no sakura to announce his departure. Her warm tears ruin the medication she is crafting.


He dyes his hair black that night. It seems the only fitting thing to do; even if it means losing his name as the pirate with red hair. The mirror gives him a strange image of a little boy with a straw hat many years older.

The air smells of Pirate King.


/kanthia writes-

yes, kanthia said raftel was ending. she lied, perhaps there was more to the story than she thought/