He wakes— wakes up in the middle of a sea, jaded and weary and tired of what had been and always will be. Surrounded by faces he wished to be replaced with the ones he knew, and not just a dozen and more of people he didn't want to be around longer as soon as he realized that this wasn't his world.

(The last thing he remembers where blurry, easy enough to forget and you wouldn't know it happened until it's too late. He didn't necessarily see anyone in that vision, but as the wind rises and the sun kisses his skin with too much to give and taken too many to steal, he knew that the blood from his injured head had something to do with it.)

The wind was different, everything was different, and once his coherency was well enough to know and discern, he was already waist-deep in the state of a panic attack the men who'd found him had to knock him out cold again.

The seas sing and thrash around him, and he has heard it laugh at him for many times (it's sickly sweet and it's overly nauseating to hear it, to know that he doesn't belong here and never will; but he cradles his head when it gets too much, and tries to fall asleep even when he knew he couldn't unless he get the worst headache of the century), and he'd found himself lost ever since he'd woken up in a ship full of thieves and outlaws.

But they're decent enough, he thinks, when they had nursed him back to proper health after they'd fished him up from the waters— unconscious and unresponsive until they've made him cough up ungodly amounts of water.

They thought he was a mink, or at least a half hybrid of a raven mink and a human, and he'd been horribly confused until the crew explained what those were even though they were equally as confused when he didn't know what those meant.

He had asked himself many times on where the hell he was, as he couldn't answer his saviors when they questioned his origin.

"I don't where this is, or where I am. " He'd said when the captain asked him a week after staying in the Brazen Locks (that was the name of this crew's ship, he was amused to figure out the meaning behind it when he had spotted large thick ropes tied together in a neat braid, hanging off of from the bows that constantly swatted at the crew men when the wind got too wild).

"Then why not stay here a little longer? You've got nowhere to go, and maybe even join my crew? " The man offered the proposition to him with a smile, friendly and welcoming despite his rough appearance, it took him a lot of time to think but he was quickly welcomed as the new member when the chance was hit— a party thrown to appraise it.

He became the crew's marksman as his new position, since apparently he had the best vision among all his crewmates and this debate was decided when he'd beaten all of them in a shooting spar.

"I don't understand a lot of things, " he'd laughed, shaking his head, "But I'll try my best to deliver."

(He was a pirate, now, among the other outlaws of this ship— and while being one was against his morals as a hero, he decided that this way of living was good enough if he sailed across the seas to find about the world, and how he was here.)

(The sea would churn and try to topple him from his feet, but as soon as he'd stand up again he tries to remind himself of his goal over and over.)

"What is your dream? " His new captain had asked him one night, leaning against the railing in the crow's nest with a gleam in his good eye.

Tokoyami had sighed that day as he looked up at the Northern star, shining brightly and familiar enough for him to ground himself to reality, maybe he had chuckled that time— or just simply smiled, but he knew himself enough to acknowledge it.

He didn't answer him at that time, still unsure and confused. But he'd try and try, even if the world behind him burns.

He was informed that this place was called the Grand Line, looking at the strange map in his hold— a place of so many things with so little information that he was almost inclined to call it the Bermuda triangle. It was a place where the ocean constantly rages and rages, where creatures like Sea Kings (giant, ugly things that reminded him of the cryptids he knew back home, but it was also far from what he'd imagine— but this was the ocean, wasn't it?) are known to drag mortals with them into the depths for all eternity, shackling them by their bones to bind them with muck and black waters until their own souls can taste it.

But it was called Paradise and Pirates' graveyard, to his horror.

It's amazing and terrifying, he thinks, but he's faced many foes before, too, some strong enough to level most of the Sea kings they've encountered sailing— but he knew his power enough to obliterate their enemies when it's needed.

(He'd wondered if Bakugo would've enjoyed battling them, but sometimes he tries too hard to forget about a lot of things and wedge himself back into focus.)

Tokoyami needed to learn a lot of things about anything in this place, and he was fascinated about most of them for a while like a child in a mall. There were communication devices called Den Den Mushis, small snails that are somehow connected to networks and such (their captain, his name is Amerson Clyde, owned one and he'd shown him his personalized Den Den when he asked about it a few weeks back), and strange compasses called Logposes that are most needed when in the Grand Line, as a normal compass doesn't really do anything when every island you encounter has it's own magnetic field.

It was wild and mostly weird in his perspective, but the Clyde Pirates indulged his curiosity enough to let him learn.

(He felt embarrassed about it, about this and that and many more. But he was grateful that his crew despite being all outlaws, were good enough people, though he doesn't trust them all that much. It was something more a like simple comradeship between them.)

It's exhilarating, the fights and the wild cards they've uprooted to cause a scene, but he immediately felt painful all over again once he'd remember what he was supposed to do and thought "Oh, have I really been? ", reigning back control to what had happened for the past few months. The waters felt like the things that it houses, but it's still the same as ever. Somehow.

Even with the monsters that lurks under, their eternal hunger and viscous nature always a constant wherever they may be.

At some point during shopping for supplies in some island he gets across a book about some things called Devil Fruits— a little thing written by some unknown author tucked away in a junk shop that was basically a hole in the wall in some back alley.

The abilities given to the person who ate a Devil Fruit reminded him of the quirks in his world, unpredictable and unique in so, so many ways.

One of his crew members had asked him about his own abilities one day, too, asking him if he was really a hybrid mink or he was just a Zoan fruit user; thus the shape of his head.

(But really, they wouldn't know what he was talking about when or if he would tell them, anyway, so he never really answered that question. Returning on making up the plot holes in his head so he would know how to answer them one day.)

There were different variations of Devil fruits, he'd found— like Paramecia, Logia, and Zoan (which understandably reminded him of the quirk types, too, considering they were almost similar), they were interesting things but he knew that if does come across one he'd rather tuck it away or sell it for profit, knowing damn well he's already powerful enough to drag a Sea king to shore and rip it apart if he wanted to.

He keeps learning about many things about this world, and hears about Gol D. Roger.

The dead man almost reminds him of All Might. Almost. But he listens as Amerson tell rumors and stories enough to compare them and rule things out if he bothered.

(The sun still kisses his skin, and the wind always wails and rises the old sails, unbothered by the whispers it seeps into the minds of the weak. But they are still different, unfamiliar and estranged, he hates it with a passion.)

As much as good companions his crewmates were, he still missed the others back home. As equally loud as they are.

But they aren't quite the same.

A year later an incident happens.

Captain Amerson gets dragged into the flames (angry and temperamental, vengeance and spite pouring from every pore and it's not even seconds until he's dead) and Tokoyami saw red.

He rages and rages, tearing apart what he saw and he lost himself for a moment in blind rage— but he let himself be swallowed up by the same shadows he keeps locked up until the Marine ships were nothing but drowning ruins in the ocean.

(But fuck them, really. They deserved it.)

They set up a memorial for the man in his home island in North Blue, far away from the carnage that he himself caused until the blood in the waters become forgotten.

(He almost laughs, because he knew he wouldn't be forgetting about that until he took it to his grave. Morals be damned.)

It was a simple thing— stone plaque etched with a name he'll never dare get lost in his own problematic mind just as he does for his goal.

Amerson was a good man despite his career choice, an he'd helped him get back to his feet and all that. The man introduced him to a lot of things, and he's the only reason why he got so far in this world anyway.

(Fumikage Tokoyami grieves with boiling hot anger rising within him— seething and wild and unpredictable. Captain Amerson Clyde lives on in whoever's mind he remains, but he's free. Although Tokoyami himself really isn't.)

And so, without a new captain to take position, the Clyde Pirates disbands.

He leaves and some of the others follow him when they didn't have anywhere to go back to, and you can't really follow the first mate when the man himself committed suicide just a week after Amerson was buried.

(Coulier was a man good enough, but his mind was weak. But he doesn't blame him for that, since he's been with the captain longer than any of them.)

So, thinking it was a good enough idea, they followed him instead.

(It's not— or maybe it was? He'd never really been that good with leadership and all that. He'd rather stay in the shadows instead of being in the limelight, but he couldn't just abandon the others, either.)

(That's just wrong. And so, with the taste of bile in his tongue and blood staining his nails, he leads what was left of his previous crew. Wild and angry and so many other things he can't say that he wished he could.)

Sacrifices were sacrifices, really, what others could he do? He doesn't have a clue what he wanted to do next anyway, since he's gotten no lead at all to his situation ever since he woke up in the now-ashes Brazen Locks. Then he'd just continue being an outlaw until he's gotten a lick of something.

It's a frustrating thing, but he tries.

4 years into pirating and 3 years ever since his old captain died, Tokoyami meets a one armed red haired man that called himself Shanks.

The guy challenges him to a fight and he loses, of course, due to his sheer strength and simply superior swordsmanship.

(But Shanks still shook his hand, anyway, as he commented how strong he was as well, for lasting longer. The guy was a weird one, he thought, and they ended up getting drunk after the spar in the red hair's ship. The dragon figurehead grinning it's wooden snout ear to ear.)

The fool had drunkenly cried to him about some boy in East Blue, who he misses so much after leaving some place called Dawn Island, clinging from his shoulders with his one arm and sagging as he sobbed unashamedly right next to him.

Tokoyami had thrown the guy's right-hand man, Benn Beckman, a long-suffering look— but the guy just shook his head and shrugged, amusement clear in his unabashed grin.

He was almost inclined to throw a bottle at Benn, but he decided against it, and just tuned out Shanks' sniper's (he thinks his name is Yassop..?) rants about his own son in East Blue, who was apparently the same age with the one the swordsman was sobbing to him about.

He groans, because this guy and his crew was weird, this world was weird. Everything was weird. And he'd rather give himself up to the Marines than having to listen to their rants about sunshine children with too-wide smiles and a dream higher than mountains.

By the time dawn breaks and they were coherent enough to stand without tripping over their own feet, Shanks gave him a firm pat on the shoulder and gave him his vivre card.

"You're a fun drinking buddy. " Shanks has said, grinning wide as if he wasn't having a killer hungover at the moment, "Almost as good as Buggy, but try to keep up, yeah? I'd like to spar with you again one day because you've lasted the longest aside from some other someone and you're fun." He threw his head back and laughed until Lucky Roux and Benn had to drag him back to their ship again.

He had allowed himself to think about what Shanks had said after they left— to get stronger, get better than what he was now because while he was rising in notoriety due to his power and his bounty begins climbing higher, he was still pretty much a small fish in even bigger, wider, waters. One filled with too many things to keep track of unless you've got eyes all over the place.

And, well, maybe it's time to practice Haki at this point, too.

Tokoyami and his crew got a new ship after the last one sunk after an excursion with another enemy pirate crew, and he's affectionately named their new one the Dark Shadow.

It was a big ship, significantly bigger than the Brazen Locks but as not giant as the Moby Dick of the infamous Whitebeard (not that he was hoping to get a really big one, ships like that are too noticeable and he'd rather stick with brigs or flagships), but he decided that it was large enough as long as it housed his men better that the last one. Adam wood was good enough.

The Dark Shadow's figurehead was a skull of an avian he forgot the name of, similarly with his Jolly Roger with crossed bones behind the painted pale skull and a couple of roses to accompany it.

As time comes and go, his crew grows in size and notoriety throughout the Grand Line. There are times he felt inclined to sail to the New World at some point, but he always tosses the thought right back at from the corner it came from.

He's learned enough of this world for the past 6 years he has been in these waters— knew enough to know that the Marines is just a cesspool of corruption and the World Government was basically a shitshow run by clowns in bubble suits.

(He had dug up enough knowledge during all this time, and he flinches whenever he remembers about the incident in Ohara or the mass infanticide issued after Gol D. Roger's death. The Marines were full of terrible people, but he knows that there's still good men within their ranks. He'd done Hero work long enough to recognize the pattern.)

He still tries to find a clue as to how and why he got here, of course, since he still wants to go back even after 6 years of being here. Tokoyami constantly wonders how much time had passed as he stays here longer, and that kind of thing just makes him want to bash his head against the mast.

Some time later the World Government issued a letter to him, proposing a position as a Shichibukai and he thought— why not? Maybe it'd give him some advances since he wanted to get in their archives anyway.

(He knows it's not that easy. It never is. But he at least needs to dig deeper, reach higher, just to find a clue or two— the only things he got where the multiple mysterious disappearances across the sea, but other than that there isn't anything no matter what he does.)

Tokoyami was known as "Hades" here, for some reason, ever since he got an official bounty poster some years back, and held an amount of a billion berri over his head— a pretty big number in the eyes of many which added to the notoriety and fame of the Ravens Lock Pirates.

But he was growing older now, and he'd be 31 years old in a two and a half year's time. He had always been jaded and wary, but he was still as powerful as he can be.

The Marines and the people are still thinking that he ate some type of Paramecia or Zoan Devil Fruit considering how his quirk works, as well as his avian appearance— but truly he never minded about those kind of things that much.

He and Shanks still meet once in a while if the Yonko and his crew were in the Grand Line, going bar-hopping after spars (he still loses, but he's getting better) as he listens again and again about the kid he left his straw hat with.

"Why won't you just visit your son, then? " Tokoyami asked Yassop one day as the sniper went on and on about his proclaimed son, "And don't give me that 'the flag is calling me' bullshit again, I bet you've never even seen them once after you left, didn't you? " He hissed, because he knew how that kind of thing felt. His own parents were never really there.

Yassop spitters, looking for an excuse or maybe even an understandable reason, Benn eyes the sniper with a frown and Shanks waits for his explanation.

When he didn't say anything though, Tokoyami sneered.

(He didn't have any connections with the man or his supposed family, but he needed to say something at least because he hated those types of people.)

"Did you even send letters? " Shanks asks, finally, frowning at him, "What about money? Did you even do anything? "

Yassop had stayed silent for a long time, and only after Shanks grabbed him from his collar as he expressed his disappointment did he react.

"Grow up, Yassop. " Tokoyami scowled, standing next to Shanks. He didn't really had no say in all this, but here he was. And he didn't want to let the man's kid suffer loneliness like he did as a child— he may not know the kid, but still.

He still remembers the expression the marksman had as he got his ass handed back to him, and tries not to say anything too much whenever Shanks comes to visit— his sniper not really appearing in the table when he's there.

("You probably scared him. " A small voice in his head says, deep, dark and existent in a way that's always been present from the roots— the voice is familiar, but he doesn't know who it belongs to, "You're still as intimidating, after all.")

He doesn't quite say anything about that, and lets himself get drunk enough to rant about his problems in front of the red haired Yonko— with Shanks patting his back as he cursed this and that, and among other things. Nodding all the way even though he looks confused.

(He receives a musket one day, it's kind of aged but it worked well enough. There was a letter inside of it with Yassop's name. Tokoyami thought of him as a coward, but be sighs and hides the weapon away in his floorboards.)

There is a time when Fumikage Tokoyami, the fourth Shichibukai of the World Government with a bounty of 500 million berris above his head, decided to go to East Blue.

It was more for necessity more than anything at this point, and he kind of wanted to have a quick vacation after a decade of pirating without even finding any lead for his situation. He's heard that East Blue was the weakest sea, so he just went with it and decided to lead his crew's second ship (designated as the Black Torrent, a nice brigantine ship with a figurehead of a roaring panther) up for the job because sailing a rather large ship into an unassuming sea was pretty much asking for the Marines to show up at his deck, even if he was a warlord.

And if they did, well, let's all just forget that that set of ships ever existed in the first place. He can't be bothered enough to go back and un-do it. Morals be damned.

So now he finds himself at Loguetown, in which this is the infamous Pirate king's birthplace, drinking at some random pub with a guy on the floor next to his seat because he got tired of being hit on and just wanted some nice ale.

He was actually wearing his veil this time, too, because he couldn't find a nice enough mask to his face and just strolling into Loguetown looking like that was just asking for trouble. But the thing was decent enough, he thinks, since it's pretty thick.

He doesn't stay there for long, maybe until evening and he's already sailing away into deeper waters, and tried to ignore how he's pretty much spent a decade in a world that was not his.

He spent the last few weeks just sailing blissfully within East Blue, not really caring about the Marine ships that he could see from the farthest corners of his vision.

It was a little dull, but it gave him enough time to think about things until he briefly recognized a certain someone sailing on a flashy flagship.

The Buggy Pirates were a colorful bunch wearing their assigned circus themed clothes, it was pretty easy to spot them, but even then he recognized that round red nose anywhere even though he's only heard of Buggy from Shanks' stories when they were still in the Oro Jackson.

When Buggy didn't recognize him and asked him for a fight— Tokoyami took a firm hold of him and threw him hard enough he didn't really know if he even landed on water or land or not.

"He's probably fine. " He says at the terrified crew, "I'm pretty sure he landed on land, that much is good enough. "

(Buggy the clown was pathetic and a fool, and Tokoyami had to get that idea into the man's head somehow. Shanks has expressed much that he'd like to spar with his old friend again some day too, and he wanted the idiot to at least last a minute if he does return to the Grand Line and sail into New World where Shanks would drag him into a battlefield, that he's sure about.)

(In Buggy's perspective, though, he was at least grateful for landing on some random island instead of the sea where he'd most likely drown to death. There are numerous weird looking Jolly Rogers sticking up from the cliffs, it's mouth long and drawn to look like it's horrified. And he finds a long-nosed kid peeking out from one of the trees.)

A week and a half later Buggy returns and found his crew right where he left them— he greets Tokoyami properly this time out of sheer fear, and of course, Tokoyami tells him to get stronger unless he wanted the red hair to drag him into the dirt. The clown complies, although mortified and confused that he knew his old shipmate from decades back, and they all have a drink.

When asked, Buggy told his crew that a kid from the Gecko islands helped him out, with a nose as weird as his (although Buggy will never really say that out loud since the kid had grown into him very well, and he was really nice, if not a bit jumpy)— and he'd bring the kid with them in a few months time.

He actually did, eventually, after two months of waiting Tokoyami finally met this 14 year old kid and he instantly reminded him of a certain sniper.

He doesn't necessarily say anything about Yassop since that's their problem, it's their family matters and he's got no place to say anything bar the ones he had uttered back in Paradise, but he does give him the musket that's been sitting in storage for a whole while.

(The child sputters, afraid and disheveled, Tokoyami doesn't quite tell him where or who it's from. But he says that it was from a relative— Tokoyami is wary and jaded, and he tells this to the kid who he believes to follow his old man's path, and leaves him with Buggy.)

But Buggy is a moron, and Tokoyami tries his best to tell the guy not to fuck up and mess with the kid's head unless he wanted him to chuck him out into the horizon again.

"What is your dream? " a faint voice asks him one night. And it's one of those nights where Tokoyami tries to drink himself to oblivion, drowning his mind blank in rum and alcohol.

He doesn't sigh this time, the Northern star forgotten long ago— lost among the other stars even if so many of them were dying. But even then, their death is beautiful even in the midst of eternal suffrage.

"To go home. " Tokoyami says, and he threw his head back and laughed.

It's dry as dust.