With the last chapter, we finally surpassed 1,000 views which is great! Anyway moving on this chapter we will catch up to the start of the manga childhood arc. The whole purpose of this mini-saga in the jungle directly responds to the time that Garp threw Luffy into the jungle which he mentions to Dadan. Lucy needs to be thrown in the deep end to get going for this story to continue.

Writing is in italics

Techniques and devil fruits are in underline

Hercules10hhao: I know but it's my first one, so when I got an average of three reviews a chapter for around 4 chapters I thought it was average. Then I uploaded chapter 6 and got nothing so thought I did something wrong. I used to filter for larger stories too, but then I realized around a year ago that some of the smaller ones if updated regularly were amazing. Considering you found my story then you didn't filter I assume?

Dwarfhamsterlio: I will listen to your wisdom and hope it brings me joy. It's not that I had burn out more that I just spent almost all of my evening everyday writing this story for a week straight. I just thought that I might need to do other stuff like study for University which I hope to the heavens will actually be open in September.

Daily fun fact: ''in 1970, roughly 6 billion dollars was spent on fast food. Nowadays, it is about 200 billion dollars''

I DON'T OWN ONE PIECE, and I never will

This is an updated version!

Chapter 8 start:

Day three in the jungle around 12:00: Ace point of view

The jungle was quiet, too quiet in Ace's opinion. It seemed that something had disturbed the local wildlife and caused them to flee this part of the jungle.

Truth be told Ace usually didn't go this far south from Mount Colombo; he either stuck to the jungle closest to it or the area over the other side of the mountain next to the grey terminal. But there was a herb that he's been 'demanded' by Dadan to find for its medicinal properties that grew extensively in this area. It seemed one of the bandits had received an injury that had grown infected with a disease, and this herb was known to be a wonder plant in helping survivability. Since he knew his way around the jungle better than almost anyone in the area he was sent out to find it.

Lucky him.

He was wandering through the jungle watching out for this miracle plant so he could get back to collecting his pirate fund with Sabo when he noticed something. That the area up ahead was shining brightly with light, almost as if the trees didn't dare block it out. Never had he seen something like this in the forest, even when one tree falls down it only takes weeks for the gaping hole in the canopy to be filled by ambitious climbers. His curiosity peaked he headed for the light.

What waited for him was devastation on an unparalleled level. Almost sixty tree's had been felled their limbs splaying out in all directions creating a sea of wood and stumps. Something had come crashing through here destroying everything in its paths, he mused as he walked up to one of the stumps over the top of the fallen trees. It was perfectly cut. It had a slightly wonky angle, not completely flat almost as if done by an axe. But by running his hand over the top he dispelled that motion, there were no splinters…it was smooth to the point of being unnatural. It reminded him of the polished wooden tables that the restaurants in Goa city used, almost crafted by master carpenters. It was not abnormal for the locals of the Goa kingdom to cut down the smaller trees of the jungle to stock up wood for cooking and warmth. But the cut was not from any axe he had ever seen, the corresponding trunks were smooth as well proving that it was felled in one swift blow. And yet this mysterious wood chopper had managed to do such a thing over sixty times with great skill. What really surprised Ace was not the wood, but its location, there were no settlements here. The closest was Goa capital over the mountains and after that perhaps one of the small villages that dotted the area…Foosha if he was not mistaken but even that was a good day away. So it made no sense to deforest this area when there were closer wood sources to the two settlements. If the person was from the capital they would have to carry the trees over the mountains for heaven's sake.

As he walked around the decimated area Ace noticed the tale-tell sound of a river, considering the jungle had many lazy brooks and streams fed from the two mountain ranges that dominated Goa's interior it was not surprising. With nothing more to look at, and a mystery plant to look for he decided a drink might be the best cause of action.

The crystal water was refreshing down his throat as he drank in deep gulps that splashed droplets all down his red shirt and shorts, but he simply didn't care. It was as he turned to look back at the man-made clearing one last time that he noticed the little cave just a ways off and in front of it a burnt-out fire. Once again the curiosity of who caused this mess crept into his mind, and while he didn't mind Dadan, her stupid flower could wait a minute or two.

With his mind made up, he wondered over, taking in the small ditch, the soft jungle mud at the back had left an imprint of the person who was resting there. Much to Aces confusion, it was small, smaller than him by a significant portion. He could tell by the fact it seemed the former occupant had lent back onto the wall, and the imprint of the persons head and body was visible. It was the imprint of a child. The person who had chopped down all the tree's in the area so effortlessly was a…child like him…what?

He was defiantly confused because that meant that a child smaller than him, had a greater amount of power than him. Not to toot his own horn but Ace was as strong as most of the adults around him, probably even stronger than most adults, and that was not an exaggeration. Never had he met a child beside Sabo who could take him one on one and yet this mysterious child wielded power greater than both of them combined. It didn't make sense at all!

Ace was so caught up in his frustrated mind that he nearly missed the small holes that started just outside the cave and followed the stream as it pushed its way south-east. It seemed as if they had a walking stick? One with a spike on the end? Perhaps a double-ended spear? Regardless the soft soil that made up the river bank had preserved a trail of bread crumbs to this mystery child and finally Ace could prove to himself that he was worthy enough to have been born. If he could beat this monster then he would prove he had the strength to take to the sea and to fill his dream. He would be the strongest and this child would be the first in the line of stepping stones.

With his face set, he followed the track of small holes to their owner, and as he took more steps forward an energy stated to slowly creep into his body. For the first time in a long time, he finally had a challenge.

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Day three in the jungle around 13:30: Ace point of view

Around an hour into the journey Ace once again noticed something was odd, the holes he had been following had stopped in a little clearing and around ten wavy cap mushrooms had been left in a pile on the floor. Just off to the side near the trees the sea of mushrooms that coated the tree bark had been massacred. Some had simply been plucked from their stalks and left on the ground like bodies at the crime scene, others had been damaged in one way or another. What really surprised him were the small bits of mushrooms next to the pile like bread crumbs.

The mystery child had eaten wavy cap mushrooms? Where they idiots?! While not lethal, it was well known by everyone he had come across that these mushrooms were halucegenic, even the children of the grey terminal could tell. As he looked back to the tree's he started to count the quantity missing from their stalks not present on the floor he calculated between eighteen to twenty-five were consumed. One was enough to cause the effect, the greater the amount consumed the greater the hallucination. This child had not only decided to eat one, but enough to cause significant stress to the eater.

And yet the little spear indents on the ground leading away from the clearing, following downstream were still visible, though it seemed that they grew less frequent. Indicating that the mystery child had carried on despite the halucegenic's kicking in. Ace took one look back at the discarded mushroom pile, then he followed the increasingly infrequent spear indents.

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The first thing that alerted him to the girl was the small gasps of breathing, it was slightly drowned out by the background chorus of the jungle but his hearing was acute enough to catch the ragged inhales of a person hyperventilating. Imagine his surprise when he finally got into view to find the same girl he had come across weeks ago curled up on the floor, hands resting over her ears so hard her knuckles and her ears had gone bone white. The rest of her was not much better, in fact, she looked even worse. She seemed an off white, almost as if she was undead. Ace could identify that it was probably a consequence of shock, he had seen it countless time in the Grey terminal when someone received a serious injury. When they started to lose too much blood. The bags under her eyes that he noticed in their last encounter had grown considerably to the point that it looked as if the girl had spent a couple of nights awake with no sleep. Her eyes were clenched shut with such force that veins were visible on her forehead. Her entire body, even her clothes he noted with disgust, where drenched in sweat. The blue T-shirt she had on was almost stuck to her body like a second skin due to the high humidity levels of the rain forest, her shorts were not any better. The mane like short cut hair that he had noticed before that gave her a boyish look was stuck to her forehead. Worse yet was the dirt that coated her, it was almost like she had dragged herself through a muddy puddle, her exposed knees were coated in a dry-ish coat of the stuff, not to mention her top and shorts which were baked in the stuff.

It seemed as if she had spent a while in this forest.

She seemed to not notice his presence as she muttered 'no' over and over in deliriousness as small tremors rocked her body. And for a while, Ace did not know what to do. He had come here with the intention of finally getting a fight worthy of proving his existence. Instead, he got a girl, the one he saved, who was obviously hallucinating from eating a stupidly large amount of halucegenic mushrooms. He had given up hours of his time for the sake of his dream, away from finding the stupid magical plant, to find this mess of a girl. For the first time in a long time, he had gotten excited to finally work out all the misery and figure out what his place in the world was. Only to find that he had gotten his hopes up for nothing. He would find no challenge here, someone else must have chopped down those trees and she must have just been in the area by coincidence. The metal pipe in his hand groaned slightly from the pressure he was putting on it in frustration.

Like the girl, before him could cause that amount of destruction, she would have killed the other guy the last time he saw her.

With his disappointment stinging deeply he turned to finally find this special plant, go home and spend some more time with Sabo. He had taken a couple of steps back up the river when the girl whimpered a name ''Makino…Shanks'' She made a small exhale through her teeth and in a whisper she carried on ''Help me''.

Something inside him stopped at that. It was small, almost not there and if it someone else had said those words he probably wouldn't have stopped. But inside him, there was a boy crying out, the one who had no one to turn too. The one who used to imagine what it would be like to have a mother, a father or…a sibling. Just someone to turn too, someone to be with him and just tell him that they aren't demons. Ace had never had a family, the bandits wouldn't even qualify and the less said about Garp the better, but he had imagined what it would be like when he stared at the stars. How much he had wanted someone to comfort him back then when he was so weak trying to find his place in the world.

He didn't know when but he started walking back towards the girl as she kept muttering no, till he was so close he could reach out and touch her. At this point he broke out of his little daydreaming, cursing his own weakness, he was stronger than that! He had been through Grey terminal and seen all the miserable, starving children with their ribs visible through the rags they called clothes. And over time he learned not to care about the rats that followed him like mice to cheese, begging him for food to which every time he brandished his pipe without a second thought.

And yet…And yet! This girl had managed not once but twice to cause something inside him to intervene first with the bandit and now as she lay convulsing on the floor obviously suffering delusions. It infuriated him, that part of him the one he thought he buried so long ago that would beg for emotional attachment, was still here. The only thing that mattered was his dream and Sabo, that was all he wanted to matter.

He didn't know how long he just stood there as she spasmed on the floor but at a point, he decided that he didn't care enough. Instead of standing around like an idiot, he might as well help her so he knelt down awkwardly placing his pipe just off to the side. Within arm's reach but not in the way. But he hit a snag, what do you say to someone in this situation? Comforting others was an alien concept, he had seen it being done but never had he imagined a situation where he would have to do it. As such he paused then decided to just do what he thought was normal when one was having a mental break down and grabbed her shoulders shouting ''Hey! Hey!''

To his confusion instead of opening her eyes and snapping out of her state and coming to reason the girl scrunched her eyes together even more while muttering ''I refuse'' over and over. It quickly got on Ace's nerves and he just decided to pry her eyes open. In response, the girl fought him by refusing to budge an inch. Quickly coming to the realization that she wasn't going to be forced into compliance he tried to convince her the same way he had seen done inside Goa city '' 'Hey it's okay! I'm not going to hurt you!'' And yet even his comforting words that he tried to get her to see reason failed.

As the girl continued resisting he just decided to get this over and done within the only way know, by slapping her as hard as he could after muttering a halfhearted apology of ''I'm sorry about this'' to the girl.

It seemed as if that worked as the girl let out a breath in surprise, breaking the never-ending cycle of ''I refuse'' much to his ears enjoyment. In its place were two coal-black eyes staring back at him, emerging from clenched eyelids like flowers from a bud in spring. At first, there was only confusion, the understanding lacking as she seemed to not even see him, then something came into focus. There was a slight sharpening of her irises as a single word tumbled out of her mouth in confusion ''…Ace?''

…What? How the hell did she know his name!? He never said it to her, not in the couple of minutes they had met. Had his exploits of stealing in Goa city become so well-known without his knowledge? Did that mean that Sabo was in danger?! It was frustrating to not know so he once again grabbed the girl by her t-shirt not caring for the dampness of her sweat that hung of it and in a low growl asked ''How do you know my name?''

He was met with silence as his new captive seemed to stare at something just passed his head with a dead expression, then some imaginary sound in her head distracted her by whispering something to her. With the first attempt of interrogation a failure he decided the only way to keep her attention was to be louder than her stupid hallucinogenic, his next question was shouted at point-blank ''What are you even doing here?!''

His first reaction to the question was for the girl to cringe back from the loud noise, but after she hit the limit of her tops stretching capability she looked at him again. She took a while to respond probably ten seconds but for Ace, any more than three was too much. Eventually, she did respond in a quiet reply of ''I-…I'm lost''

So not only did she eat Wavy caps, but she's also lost in the middle of nowhere. It was a mystery that made no sense to Ace, and with his patience frazzled by his knee jerk reaction over Sabo's safety he snapped at the Girl ''Are you an Idiot?! Eating wavy cap mushrooms! Staying by yourself without a weapon! Wondering into the jungle without knowing where you're going!''

Silence once again returned as she computed what he said, but seemingly slower than normal. She didn't directly respond to any of the accusations but Ace had good enough hearing to catch the small almost inaudible mutter of ''I don't want to be here''

But it was gone almost as fast as it came and it might as well have been the slight breeze playing tricks on his mind. Needing a confirmation of the new knowledge he grasped the Collar even tighter forcing her glassy eyes to gaze directly into his then when he had her attention fixed on him asked ''What?''

She seemed to mull over the words for a bit then responded almost half-heartedly ''I was-I wa-s left here'' Her small piece of information made no sense, the red-haired man with the facial scar had saved her. The events of that day were still a saw memory, one moment he's going to run for his pipe to save the girl after she mysteriously escapes from the bandits grasp, then this random red-haired man shows up out of nowhere kills his opponent and after a couple of seconds picks up the girl and vanishes. Just vanishes in thin air, while he's left to stare at a decapitated body, with one arm chopped off.

But the red-haired man seemed extremely protective over her, he couldn't imagine him abandoning her in the jungle with no protection. In the silence that followed her reply, something was going on with the girl as her jerks became more frequent and her eyes strode to things beyond him. Fearing losing the little attention he had commanded he acted on impulse asking an idiotic question of ''by the red-haired guy?'' even though he already knew the answer.

Despite the stupid question, he did get the desired response as the girl once again focused her attention onto him. Unlike before however, there was less…something in her eyes. It seemed that she was once again relapsing into the state she was in before. Except her small attempts at trying to get away from him were growing in number and strength, still, she responded in an almost drugged manor stating ''No…no-no it was my Gr-Grandfather…'' Before he could ask the sequential question she beat him to the punch murmuring ''…Garp'' while bringing one of her small hands to her temple.

She also hit her head on the floor as he lost all the grip of her collar in his surprise….Garp was her…Grandfather? What?

Ignoring the moaning girl as she rolled uncoordinatedly away from him, he focused on what that meant. All of a sudden the words made sense, not really, but much more than they did. Garp tried the same trick on him when he was younger, so the reason the girl was in the jungle was due to Garp. He wondered where his 'Grandfather' wandered off too during this visit and now knew the reason. He was not the only Grandchild of Garp, and now that he looked at her fully as she started to spasm slightly on the floor he could see the resemblance, in the ebony black eyes, in the wild mop of hair, in the facial structure. And if she was saying the truth then she was on one of his crazy survival tests. But then who was the red-haired guy? Not a family member he looked nothing like the Monkey D's he already knew, wrong body type, defiantly the wrong hair.

But none of that mattered not now at least when he got back to Dadan he could contemplate the whole situation. After all she was technically, and only technically, a member of his family if one could consider the Sh*ty gramps a family figure.

Turning back to the moaning girl he found her on her knees holding her head in pain, it seemed that by inflicting a head injury even if unintentionally he had sparked another wave of hallucinogenic activity as she started reacting more and more irrationally. Ace just couldn't care to deal with this cr*p at the moment. He had to figure out where she found his name from, it might directly affect Sabo and his safety. She, annoyingly, couldn't tell him now as much as he wanted her too. Let's not forget the stupid magical herb he still had to get, and had wasted an hour of his time to find an idiotic girl. So done with everything he grabbed one of her arms with the intention of dragging her with him if he had too.

What he didn't account for was that at that moment Lucy was not quite there and experiencing an illusion that caused ghostly hands to grasp all over her body. As such when he grabbed her arm and started tugging she naturally resisted. As he eventually overpowered her and started to drag her along with him she was so convinced that the illusion was real she grabbed a large (For her) stick and smashed it at his arm with desperate ferocity.

All of a sudden all Ace felt was the sting of something hard smack into his arm. He had done enough fight with Sabo and their iron poles that such a blow barely registered but the shock of its surprise meant that the girl managed to getaway. As he turned around to face the danger with a speed that screamed of amazing reflexes he noticed that the girl was brandishing her stick in the manner of a spear in a weak guard against his response. For the first time, he heard her scream ''Stay away from me!'' as she jabbed the end in his direction in a poor imitation tactic.

His reply of ''Wait!'' was met with closed ears as she never took her deep black eyes off of him, and somewhere lurking behind the fog of the chemicals was a glimmer of determination. With no way to convince her otherwise, he fell back on the things he understood, fighting. Clenching his pole in his right hand he copied her stance with the proper version, fully intent on subduing her no matter how brutal and simply carrying her.

It was her who broke the silence running at him with a wild war cry, after she got close she brandished her stick like a bat and swung from her left leg to over her right shoulder in an diagonally upward swing. Ace simply shifted into a simple block, content with finishing her off in a well-timed counter strike as she overcommitted. The first thing that tipped him off that something was not right was the fact he never felt the swing hit his staff and yet it finished its arc. The next was that as he went to counter-attack both hands moved separately as if they held individual pieces. The feeling was enough to stop his counter attack dead as he glanced at his staff in confusion only for it to turn into horror. His metal pipe had been split into, the part in his right hand the larger of the two almost double the size of the other. The edge of the separation though was smooth, like it had been cut from a blade, in fact, it was almost perfect…no perfect. In his confusion, he remembered the tree's from earlier, and the unnatural cut that both the stump and trunk had, in an instant, he compared both and came to a realization. This girl was responsible for the trees, she was the monster he had been looking.

A scream from his opponent warned him that she intended to bisect him with her stick, something in the back of his mind told him to duck and as such he threw himself to the ground. He was rewarded for listening when the tree unfortunate to be behind him met the same fate as his staff as it slowly slid off its stump. He was on one knee staring in shock at the result when he remembered the fight and that his opponent was raising her stick over her head for a vertical swing. However Ace was nothing if not an instinctive fighter and in a moment figured out a counter-attack, as she swung her stick down in all her fury he rolled forward to safety and then with the long part of his staff spun backwards aiming with the thicker part at her temple.

It met its mark and the girl, fell like a puppet with its strings cut, crashing to the floor.

He let out a sigh of relief at that, if her swing had hit him then he would have no doubt it would cut him in half like everything else. But that still posed the question of what she even did, was it her stick? A quick test of that proved negative. So it was the girl who was causing the problem, but when he overpowered her it wasn't with a significant portion of his strength. So what was she doing?!

As he looked at the large ditch her last swing had created, he couldn't help but believe that old tale he'd heard of those who ate the devil's fruit, who gained abnormal ability's. Still, as he looked at the downed unconscious girl he figured the only way to find out was to talk to her, without the stupid delusions. Dadans plant be screwed.

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Lucy point of view day three 19:00

The first thing she felt was the pounding of her head, it was a slight banging, but compared to the muffledness she felt it was significant. For a while she didn't want to get up, to just go back to the all-encompassing darkness where she felt nothing. But eventually her senses sharpened as her brain slowly came back online, and with it came everything else. The crippling hunger, the slight hint of thirst and the now head-splitting banging of her temple…the voices had disappeared much to her tired enjoyment.

It took some time to just ignore the pain, as she lay on a very comfortable mattress…wait what?

Fearing she had been captured by some bandits, or even worse, she jerked upright eyes open to view the horrors that awaited her. At the motion her body protested violently, and despite not having anything in it, she vomited the contents of her empty stomach onto the wooden floor beside her. The worst part was the sharp pain that rattled through her skull, it felt as if someone was squeezing her head like a tomato and at any second it was going to pop. Even as the initial wave died down, the aftershocks continued as she clenched her teeth and eyes together riding out the slowly quieter waves of pain. Had she fallen off a cliff and smashed her head on the floor below? What was she even doing?

It took her a couple of minutes to reorient herself enough to realize she was not along and someone was rubbing her back and saying something to her, what it was she didn't know but it sounded comforting at least through the fog of pain. After the waves got less and less, she finally dared to open her eyes. What greeted her was the image of her puke, half-digested mushrooms littering the ground. Even that blurred as her vision swam in and out of focus like she was looking down the barrel of a microscope while it was zooming in and out. The vison on her left side was worse, the area around her eye seemed to be swelling like someone had given her a black eye. But the source of the pain was higher up her forehead, above her eyebrow. A quick test of a small poke with her index finger sent another wave of white-hot pain flaring up through her skull, and for another while she clenched her eyes closed and road out the waves.

''You shouldn't do that brat'' Said some disembodied voice, off to the side of her and for a moment the thought that the voices would come back haunted her. When would it end? But as she turned to face the voice expecting some demon of her wildest imagination she found a woman. Well, she thought it was a woman. She was built like a rock, her shoulders were perhaps the widest she had ever seen for a woman and her neck was professional body builder's level of thick. Her body had none of the womanly curves one would expect except perhaps the obvious muffin top, the rest of her torso was just…dense like a barrel and perhaps some cleavage could be seen if you looked hard enough. All this was covered with a simple white t-shirt with a large red beaded neckless running down the majority of her chest. Proportionally her legs were stunted if one took her large brown belt that held her checkered green and brown trousers up as the end of her torso. The thing that really hinted to Lucy that she was a woman was the long curly ginger hair that fanned out over her massive shoulders like sheep's wool. Her face was very masculine, a strong jawline augmented her already impressive neck muscles. Her mouth took up an almost ridicules amount of her face, large puffy lips reminding Lucy of those who sold their body off for plastic surgery except it looked natural in a way theirs would never be. In proportion her eyes and nose were small and compact, this was compounded further by the distinct lines of ageing that highlighted that the woman was reaching perhaps getting on a bit in years. Either that or a significant amount of stress.

What brought Lucy out her observation was not the woman carrying on but a sudden and sharp spike of pain through her skull. For a moment the white-hot surge overtook her unprepared senses and she was forced to scrunch her eyes closed and ride out the storm. Once again someone started rubbing her shoulder but this time she could make out what was being said ''There, there just breath'' came the voice of a man, but it possessed a childish quality to it. It was slightly higher in octaves than she would expect. It was only when the pain started to reside that she could finally open her eyes again and she saw the reason why. The person beside her was a dwarf, taller than Lucy but not by much. He had a turban or a head wrap? On his head which unlike the woman was more rounded like a sphere. He wore a pink Pokka dotted overalls over his yellow shirt. On his back, he had a large, for the man, sword which much to Lucy's horror was not in a scabbard. Because of his proximity to her, the edge of the sword must be close to her back. At that realization another one came, she had no clue who these people were and once she figured this out she sprang to her feet forcibly removing the man's hand in the process and tried to make as much distance as possible. Keyword tried as halfway into her sudden retreat, the dizziness of getting up so fast combined with her headache caused her to stumble almost falling to the floor but she caught the wooden wall at the last second as her stomach once again protested. But now that she knew it was coming the nausea wasn't so bad and she managed to overcome the sensation.

At her sharp retreat, the two members of the room shouted something in surprise, but at the time she was focusing on more important details. Eventually, as she managed to get her breathing under control and the pounding became less she looked up from her bent over position and asked the room a question ''…Where am I?''

Despite asking it to both strangers the dwarf seemed to let the ginger woman take the spotlight as he only stared back at her tense with an arm raised enough to grab his sword if needs be. After a staring contest between Lucy and the ginger woman, she finally relented stating with an almost professional tone ''I am Dadan, leader of the mount Colombo bandits…you're in my home brat''

Despite not being able to think straight anymore the words eventually set in and she understood them. Dadan received a very short response ''…sh*t''

I have added the extra stuff into the chapter, so yeah. Next chapter should be out by Monday night around 11 British time. Looking back over the manga, Ace at age 11 managed to kick (I think) a tree over. That's pretty impressive. What surprised him was the way that the trees had been cut down not that they were. On a different note, Lucy and Ace share a very similar character profile, both feel rejected by this world, both are looking for a path, both are introverts and highly cynical, the difference is that Ace is more prone to violence, Lucy is more prone to using her head to fix her problems. Ace also has less morals, something Lucy has a lot more. She will keep that throughout the story.