Setting sail
Luffy stood in the doorway of the Bandit's hut, looked out to sea, and grinned from ear to ear. In various towns across the island people were participating in the annual festival of children's day, children and adult alike screaming and shouting in joy. He had already said his goodbyes to those inside the hut, some more reluctantly than other, and so it was time to set out.
All too soon he was at the village in which he had been raised before Garp decided to hand him over to his brothers. Children raced along the streets with their parents close behind, but another gathering was crowding around the docks, one he was much more interested in even if it was smaller.
And there they were, Ace leaning casually against the ships railing closest to the gang way, grinning as he caught sight of Luffy walking towards them. At long last he was grabbing his brother's hand as Ace hauled him up unto the boat, a lot larger than the small row boat he had originally intended but it needed to be to fit the various members of his family and crew. Whispers of "happy birthday" and "good to see you, Captain" echoed around the wooden Deck as the others greeted him.
With a final wave to Rocinante, Makino, Woodslap, and the few other villages that they had gotten along with they set sail, pulling away from Dawn Island for the last time until they had made their way around the grand line.
Luffy smile, it was time for the adventure to begin, at long last they were free.
AN: that is the end of remembering, I hope you enjoyed reading it. This last chapter is more because we are not supposed to publish just Author's Notes, but I would like to clear up a few things as well as tie this story up with Luffy setting off with his rather different crew.
I had no plans to write a sequel when I started this, but then I had no plans to write this either, anything I do end up writing that occurs after this will just be added to the end of this story, I won't publish it as a separate one.
For those interested, the first chapter of this was a single scene that was stuck in my head that I couldn't get rid of until I started writing it. As I was writing it, scenes from Chapters 3 and 4 decided to join the one from Chapter 1 in driving me insane. Those scenes then decided to collaborate in creating more scenes and eventually just re-wrote the whole ASL childhood arc.
The result of that was that I wrote 20 000 words in four days, and then the story abandoned me before it was finished. After several months of staring at the incomplete story on my computer I gave up and started posting it one chapter a week in the hopes that the last few chapters would miraculously turn up before it was time to post them so that I could keep my regular updates, surprisingly this actually worked for a while, and then it just up and left.
The other reason for posting one chapter a week was the hope that a part two might also suggest itself before the posting of this chapter, and while several ideas have decided to make themselves known I am a little busy in the real world at the moment and I would prefer to have it almost complete before I start publishing it so it could take a while to make an appearance, a very long while, and I can't actually guarantee that it will ever turn up.
So, to summaries something that took too many word to say, this entire thing was written without any planning or control on my part, and any sequel will be written in the same manor.