A/N: I don't own One Piece. Also, trigger warning for a little self-mutilation in this chapter.

Coby's mouth moved a lot as they approached their destination. Hungry as she was, Luffy had a hard time paying attention. The wrinkles of worry on his forehead and the general tone the boy took with her spoke of a warning.

"-they call him a demon in human flesh-," Ah. There were the words.

"-kills just for fun-," She closed her eyes, feeling the breeze on her face.

"Roronoa Zoro."

The world held still. If nothing else, these words caught her attention, bringing her mind to a much darker time in her life and her connection to complete strangers. It was all she could do not to shake with anticipation.

Her gifts had given her that name long before she ever left her childhood home in search of adventure. At that time, all she had wanted was an escape or some form of hope. She had been young, you see, and left to her own devices on a vast swath of land with only outlaws and two vagabond brothers for company. It had been a simpler era without access to her gifts, but happiness wasn't entirely out of her reach.

Ace and Sabo were magnificent companions, though the former had started their relationship by loathing her. She remembered his stares at their table during the evenings those first few months. There had only been a couple of oil lamps to reveal what food the makeshift family scrounged for themselves. Unfortunately, whatever luck their caretaker Dadan and her goons had with plundering travellers never translated to a better life to their wards.

Ace's expression was intense when their eyes locked. His freckled face strained. For all the effort Gol D. Roger's son placed into ignoring her at all other times, he couldn't pretend she didn't exist during their meals. His brows furrowed and beads of perspiration trickled down his temples regardless of the ambient temperature. Luffy would learn later that he had been trying to summon some imaginary power to wish her away.

She never, ever, hated him for it. It upset her, as she was a child with no one else her own age to confide in. However, she didn't gain anything in her life from giving up easily. Instead, she sought to impress him. To make him care about her, despite everything she'd ever been told about humanity's inability to control other people. Somewhere in her infantile mind the though had made sense. If he looked hungry, she ran into the dangerous forest and hunted (often to disastrous results; when she would come to she didn't know whom had rescued her). If he was tired, she sought comfortable places for him to rest. If he was frustrated to the point of physically assaulting trees, she cheered for him until he shouted to the heavens and ran into the wilderness to a place he assumed she couldn't find.

She proved him wrong and had the acquaintance of his friend Sabo to show for it. It was to the two of them she would demonstrate her mettle. She defended their secrets to a crew of violent adults, forcing the boys to rescue her and Ace to finally accept that she could exist alongside him. Sabo followed his example. Fraternity bound them through an oath.

They did everything together. They fought, hunted, bathed, scavenged, and trained in a pack. Looking back on those years, Luffy had to admit they were the best of her life.

Then, as all good things were wont to do, they ended.

The murder of a loved one acted as a storm that sent her reeling. Perhaps it was that trauma that awakened the multiplicity for the first time. She was screaming Sabo's name in the shadow of a burning ship and her eyes were opened to the sensation of howling as legion.

Her grief magnified and she dug fingernails into her skin until they bled. The injury brought premonitions while Ace embraced her insensate form. The action was supposed to be one of placation and mutual comfort, but in a very real sense, the sister he knew ceased to be.

She wasn't invested in inhabiting her own body. She saw one of her (a male), limp weakly with Ace in tow to Dadan's cabin. She saw them shiver under a shared cover, safe. This version of her had already started to heal by accepting the shock of the tragedy.

Luffy envied him. She watched but was unable to completely remember why.

She remained him for too long. For the first time and last, she spent years in one of her heads. He named champions as comrades and they loved each other dearly. They grew from experiences and had an awesome vessel. She had to see this through as him, she had to!

It cost her dearly to remain as long as she did. The vision ended whether she wanted it to or not.

She wanted the other life back. She wanted his friends, his life. Her tiny mind desired nothing more than to erase him for not suffering in that moment.

How could she be one person now? How could she return to herself? She was alive and Sabo was BURNING. She could smell roasting wood and charred flesh mixing with garbage.

Ace's tear-filled eyes widened in horror as his sister began trying to rip her own skin off with her teeth. If she could just rip this body apart. If she couldn't throw her flesh away, she would never be him again and she would never be whole and all of the wisdom of a child said this hell would never stop!

All of her strength made this a messy endeavor and there was a small amount of mutilation before good sense brought her brother to leap on top of her in a furious heap.

She resisted, drawing on the other self's muscle memory. Her skin became superheated and she brought bloodied fists to his face. Like a feral beast, she howled. She felt the rippling of flesh. She hurt him. She had to! He wasn't letting her go back!

He didn't take Luffy's abuse standing down. Ace fought back with as much fervor and passion as was possible given their situation, though his attacks did very little but refocus his younger sister's animal rage. His only fortune lay in the fact she was terribly damaged and ultimately collapsed.

She didn't awaken for days, and when Luffy finally opened her eyes, she couldn't bring herself to even thank Dadan for watching over her. The lack of communication within family lines followed the same pattern. Ace avoided eye contact with her, withdrawing to his makeshift fort for hours.

Luffy ignored this. Her goal hadn't changed. Rather, she now had a more organized plan to get to another self's consciousness. where she would escape the pain.

Luffy survived every day with Ace at a proverbial distance. She felt him close, but they continued their silence. Each child only did what they had to. She waited patiently for him to slip away every day and ripped her flesh again with all of her morbid hope.

For days nothing came of this but waves of pain from everyone involved. No one spoke of the injuries or the blood under dirty fingernails. No one talked about the rapidly thinning child in their midst. Enabled as she was, within two weeks Luffy was everyone once more. She searched through the stream of consciousness and found her previous path.

She felt his love for his life and crew. She became it.

She tried to memorize their names.

She traced the contour of every face.

She reveled in the destruction of their enemies.

She stayed longer. She stayed until she saw the one thing that could hurt more than Sabo's demise.

Ace died for her. She wouldn't remember just how when she pushed back against the vision of her own accord, but the perspective of an addict left her and she was screaming her brother's name with the scent of charred flesh newly in her nostrils.

Birds flew away from the clearing where she had called the multiplicity. Luffy fell to her knees and broke into sobs, her bloodied fingers now staunching the flow from injuries she had previously fought so fiercely to sustain.

Everything from the vision was still a dream, and as all nightmares, it faded somewhat in the light of day. It was no longer the body in her arms, the oppressive sunlight, or the taste of tragedy in her mouth... but it was a looping taste of catastrophe.

She pounded the ground. She didn't want it anymore, but some of it was still persisted. Distantly, she knew she was still calling for Ace; her voice grew hoarse with the effort.

He came. Bless him; he hadn't abandoned her entirely. Her sobbing screams had summoned him at a run and he knelt down in front of her, eyes mirroring her pain.

Her words stopped and their arms rounded one another.

She couldn't stop telling him she was sorry.

He let her apologize, but thought the words and tears came from a different source than he assumed. She never corrected him. The Luffy before him was not the same as the one at his side a month before, but she still loved him. She was still his sister.

She didn't scar much. The rubber skin was to thank for that. Time also had her treating the gift of multiplicity with more caution. She learned its patterns and limited her time as many or someone else, but fell prey to one failure that would mar her innocence as long as she persisted:

She couldn't stop abusing it entirely.

On some level, she knew it could be useful. Perhaps she could even use it to alter the future… or at least enjoy a moment with much more fervor. But she would never live as them again; she would no longer escape or hide.

She promised Ace this in his sleep, just as she promised to protect him.

They grew closer through mourning. They learned to do everything as a duo rather than a trio. Time, by its very nature, moved on.

Now, as a far more mature Luffy stared at Coby's mouth continue to move, she remembered all of this and more over the course of several seconds due to the nigh-mystical nature of the human brain. Roronoa Zoro had been one of her other self's most important companions. There had been a bond there nearly beyond comprehension, and she would be meeting him.

Granted, this would be a different version of him, but she doubted he deviated much from what she remembered. It helped that her memories were more images and a feeling of comfort associated with his name rather than exact details and events. It gave her leeway to accept many details, whether she believed them or not.

She didn't believe everything coming out of Coby's mouth. She caught that this Zoro was a bad man, for example. In all probability, she was right.

Perhaps this was why she strode towards the marine base in Shells Town so confidently after Coy and she had moored their tiny boat, dragging a nervous Coby along by the scruff of his shirt.

"I'm not ready! LUFFY! Put me down! I need to go into the base of my own accord and my clothes aren't even clean! First impressions are important if I want to be trained as a marine and PUT ME DOWN!" He knew that she wouldn't release him unless the whim struck her, but he had to attempt to mount an escape.

He was so involved in fretting about every way he could be rejected by his potential superior officers that he barely registered the fear on the everyday citizenry's faces when he mentioned the marines. Register it he did, however, and he was forced to think about what just might be causing these townspeople to be so skittish.

Even once the initial shock was over, he noticed a few familiar signs of oppression. Their faces were downturned. They didn't smile unless they were selling something. There were probably more to be found, but observation was hard work when one was literally being dragged on a gravel road.

"Luffy, the people here are acting pretty strange." He announced as the marine base transitioned from a distant landmark to a looming shadow.

"Hmm." She hummed. Anyone else might think it was an acknowledgment of Coby's words, but he had a suspicion.

"You're not really listening, are you?"

"Hmmmmmm."

He sighed as they came to an abrupt halt in front of the looming gates of their destination. Coby immediately straightened his posture and started to dust himself off in preparation for anyone who might come striding through those doors. His expectations were not in line with reality, however. Under the noonday sun, the courtyard was eerily silent.

Luffy left his side and scrambled up a wall with only shallow footholds after kicking off her sandals. He supposed that it had something to do with the gripping power of her rubber limbs that she managed to ascend so easily.

"Hey, Coby! Check this out!" she called. Knowing it probably wasn't wise, he started to voice an objection only to let it die in his throat. She wouldn't listen, anyway.

He eyed the wall and approached. He rubbed his hands together and tried to copy Luffy's climbing technique as best he could, but ended up just flailing against the stone.

She looked back at him, and in a burst of understanding, her left arm elongated and brought him beside her. He followed her eye-line back to her previous locus of interest.

"Is that…?" he asked under his breath.

"The bounty hunter guy? Probably." Luffy said with a shrug, though her eyes spoke of an intense interest that Coby mistook for dangerous teenage infatuation.

"We should probably leave before he sees us. I'm betting we aren't supposed to be up here." Coby pressed, looking from his new friend to the prisoner.

If the bounty hunter noticed them from his perch, he made no signal of it.

"You might be right, Coby." Luffy said quietly. Hope swelled in Coby's chest only to be swiftly crushed. "-but I'm going to go talk to him."

"Why? WHY?! WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!" He hadn't meant to yell, but Luffy was so ridiculously stubborn!

Amused, Luffy smiled in such a way that her self-satisfaction practically bled through her exposed teeth. The boy opened his mouth to give in to her baiting when a hoarse voice interrupted.

"Would you two just SHUT UP? I'm trying to concentrate."

Coby felt the hair on the back of his neck rise in alarm, but Luffy shifted her attention to the speaker with an airy laugh. She flung herself over the fences, pirouetting through the air like an acrobat and failing to stick the landing like the amateur she was.

"Hey, there! You're Roronoa Zoro, right?" she asked, standing hardly three feet away from the supposedly homicidal captive. That insufferable smile never left her face. Coby's jaw dropped.

Zoro looked up to the waif that had entered his place of humiliation with disdain. Through his exhaustion and near-delirium, she appeared to morph into several different shapes before settling on that of a woman in clothes that any fashionista would travel back in time in order to destroy even the idea of their existence. "Yeah. Fuck off."

She stepped closer, the stench of his misery and filth assaulting her nostrils. "You're being tortured." she said simply, the grin she had upheld fading and replaced with something far more pained.

Zoro wasn't comfortable with what he assumed was pity.

"Leave. They'll kill you if they see you here." he growled, voice cracking.

"Let them try." she said, pulling a small gourd out of a hilariously oversized pocket on her baggy shorts. He closed his eyes against his envy and temptation. The agreement he'd made with that bastard clearly stipulated he couldn't drink or eat, but...

The water was forced into his mouth when she unceremoniously shoved the receptacle between his chapped lips. It was warm, but he accepted it eagerly.

Coby brought his palm to his face. This could hardly get more absurd. Then, he felt something contact the wall next to him. The next thing he knew, a small girl was clambering up it with a basket of riceballs.

What was it about criminals that made them attract such aid?! He'd heard about how females were supposed to like bad boys, but this was inexcusable!

"Get away from here. Leave the bad man BE!" Coby ordered.

The girl looked at him and just glared.

"You don't know anything." she accused, voice desperate.

She was clearly afraid, but took a deep breath and looked past the fence. She relaxed when she saw Luffy already in the enclosure. It didn't take much to see she wasn't a marine and had Zoro's interests in mind as she was currently giving him life-saving water.

"Hey, Lady!" the little girl called after a cursory look told her the guards were clearly busy elsewhere.

Luffy looked up from Zoro, whose attention on the liquid was still unbroken.

"Hm?"

"Give him these, okay?"

The child wrapped the towel around her riceballs tightly and tossed the basket at the stranger.

"Sure thing!" Luffy laughed, catching the receptacle in an outstretched free hand.

Zoro had finished the water by this point and was sputtering from the gourd still shoved in his maw.

When Luffy pulled it away, he coughed momentarily and gave a frustrated grunt.

"Oh, for fuck's sake...," was all he managed to say.

"Hey. Shut up and eat these." Luffy said, stowing the gourd and pulling out a riceball. She shoved it at his mouth rather than in it, but the food still managed to make it down his throat without choking him to death.

He started to protest, but another one followed.

Coby saw a look of pure happiness on the little girl waiting on the ladder.

"Why?" he asked. "I mean, I can't guess why Luffy's helping; but why did you make him this food?"

"He's a good guy. They punished him for saving me." It was a vague allegation, but given the circumstantial evidence, Coby began to piece together the political situation on the island. Namely, that the people lived in fear of the soldiers. That meant that Luffy was feeding an unguarded folk hero.

Something was wrong with that sentence. It was foolish to carry on as if there wasn't, but the actors of the scene gave it their all.

Luffy was about to shove the final onigiri into Zoro's mouth when a voice broke the ambiance.

"It is a crime punishable by death to aid a condemned prisoner!"

She stowed the last morsel back into its basket and turned to face the approaching marines.

"It's shitty to force someone to starve and sully themselves while bound to some pieces of wood!" she called back, her hands balling into fists.

"Hey, he volunteered for his, you know." The apparent ringleader, a blonde youth who puberty had been cruel to glowered at her and pointed his finger accusingly. "You're ruining his bargain!"

Zoro's eyes widened and Luffy heard the breathing pattern that corresponded with abject terror.

"Eh? I don't give a crap." She growled. "Was this thing your idea?"

"It's only natural. He raised a hand against me for those fools. Everyone involved with that incident should have been executed on the spot, but we decided this would work out better. He only had to survive for a month without food and water."

The young man laughed, his mirth as unattractive as the rest of him. "Not that all that matters now. Captain Morgan's orders are absolute."

"You're Captain Morgan?" Luffy asked skeptically. He was too young. He didn't even wear a proper uniform.

"He's my father. But let's not concern him with this, hm?" His eyes shifted sideways to the spectators on the wall.

"Clearly, this was a conspiracy. I could tell him, but… I think I'll just make an example of you and be done with it."

He leveled his finger at the woman before him anew.

"STOP!" Zoro yelled. "I threatened her, Helmeppo! She doesn't have anything to do with this!"

Coby's knuckles were white on the stone wall. The little girl whimpered.

Luffy breathed in through her nostrils with verve.

"You're a terrible liar, Roronoa." the young man chuckled. It was with gravitas that the youth raised a hand with three fingers raised. "3,"

"GET OUT OF THERE NOW!" Coby yelled, knowing well that a countdown to death had been initiated.

"2," A finger retreated from view.

"Run! Forget about me and RUN!" Zoro bellowed. His pleas confirmed Luffy's first impression.

"1." Helmeppo's final digit lingered, hesitant.

"Everything will be okay, Zoro." she said gently, as if she were speaking to a child. She stretched out her arms and formed what Coby immediately recognized was the most effective position of a human shield. The boy was shocked. He genuinely believed Luffy to be heroic, but not on this level. This was a favor to a stranger and therefore a foolish waste of life by common convention.

Coby's breath caught in his throat and he reached out to cover the child's eyes. Time slowed. Captain Morgan's son's hand had returned to a closed fist.

"Fire."