AN: I'm not sure if this is my best work but I did try my best.
I Dont own One Piece.
This has once again not been beta read, there are most likely spelling and grammar mistakes that I missed. If you point them out to me, I will try my best to fix them.
As always please enjoy, or don't that is up to you.
As soon as I stepped into the bar I knew I had made the right choice. For some odd reason, I felt it in my gut. This is where I was meant to be. I had come to the one place in Loguetown I would be safe.
The room was devoid of life. Which to be honest was kinda spooky. Though for the conversation I want to have, it's probably better the bar is devoid of life. I was looking for the owner of the bar hoping he could help me with the current situation I found my self in.
It looked about like most bars do with a counter and wooden chairs. Tables off by themselves. The place was well lit at least. I could admit it was actually quite comfortable looking in here. Though honestly, this place needs a good scrubbing. It also wouldn't hurt for an update of the interior. Most of the bar seems to be worn down over time. It didn't help that most of the chairs were resting on the tables upside down. It gave the place the appearance that they were closed.
I slowly make my way to the bar. As if summoned I saw the one man I was looking for, Odd, I didn't see him when I was looking around. Raoul, he looked like a man who had seen a thing or two. His skin looked almost leathery in appearance and the wrinkles did him no favors. He wore a purple beanie on his head, Beady black wire glasses with small rims sat stiffly on his nose, and his ears were adorned with simple gold hoops. His shirt was a red-hemmed white shirt. A chain neckless of some sort sat around his neck.
Seeing a character you know in anime turned into a flesh and blood person was a trip, to say the least.
Though I had noticed that while I was observing him. He was doing the same to me. His pinpoint black eyes seemed to stare into my very soul, judging me and weighing my worth. I was quite curious as to what he would make of me. This man had once been surrounded by pirates. All of them eating and drinking, making merry. Now though, what was probably once a place of great excitement and bolsters attitudes was now almost a relic of the past. How sad a thought that was. That this place would one day wither as this old man was.
"Huh, Can I help you boy?" Raoul said his voice setting off warning bells in my brains. This man might not look it, but he could be very dangerous. A Tiger is hiding in the meat suit of an old man. How exciting.
"Sure Sir, see I'm waiting for my Captain to make his way here. He's Gonna Take the throne there's no doubt about it in my mind. I was wondering If you might be able to help a broke pirate who is willing to help out around here." I say trying to keep my voice steady and not let my nerves show. Technically I am not a pirate yet also technically I haven't joined the Straw Hats yet. I'm going to though there is no doubt in my mind that joining them is what I need to do. With them, I know my adventure is sure to be crazy.
Something about the way this guy is studying me makes me feel like a frog being dissected. All my secrets could be poked and produced by this man. I never imagined he would be this intimidating. He just seemed like an old man in the anime. Though I suppose a man who has lived as long as him in a profession so close to pirates has to have something going for him.
"What makes you so sure, boy? The Grand line is mighty dangerous. Going After Rogers thrown has gotten many a man killed." He grinned maliciously at me. Me being the observant one that I am noticed almost immediately one of his top teeth missing. That's good keep trying to distract yourself I told myself.
In that instant as I looked back into this old man's eyes, who most would assume was weak and feeble, I saw my death. Not literally of course. Something inside of me told me I would die if I didn't run away right now. Like some deep hiding animal instinct that had nestled itself deep inside my mind never making a sound until it finally reared its ugly head to scream danger. I don't know why it had to choose this exact moment to make itself known. I wish that it would have stayed buried.
So this is the level of intimidation I can expect from this world. How scary. I could literally feel my Fight or flight instinct Screaming harder at me to get away. I stood my ground though. I dug my fingernails into my palm and centered my breathing in such a short span of time it almost seemed like an instant.
See Most people would be scared of dying, and to a certain extent so am I. The thing that pulled me though was the thought of How Ironic it would be for the man I thought to be my savior would, in fact, turn out to be my killer. I have the worst sense of humor and apparently the worst timing as well. The giggle burst out of me without even a second for me to process the action.
"Well Old man, the thing is, is dying really such a scary thing If your reaching for your dream? I mean No one wants regrets on their deathbed, right?" I say looking straight at the old man.
"Well, this place does need a good cleaning." He turns around and walks three feet and grabs a heavily used broom and mop. He set them at the end of the bar and tells me "Well quit your sitting I'm not paying you to sit around doing nothing, brat. I want this place spotless."
For the life of me ill never understand how this old man went from terrifying to A gentle old man so fast. I didn't want to see any more of his Crazy personalities so I did as he asked.
I swept, cleaning the floors of dust. Moving the tables and chairs as I went so as to get all of the mess. I ended up making a pile in the middle of the room of all my hard effort. This task only took me about forty-five minutes. Once I had deposited the dirt into a trash can. I began the task of mopping the floors. It was hard work to tell you the truth. There were a lot of stains that were never going to come up no matter how much elbow grease I put into it. After I had completed this task I moved all the Tables and chairs back to where they were in the first place.
"Hey, sir you don't happen to have a cloth I can wipe these tables down with do ya?" As soon as the words left my mouth I felt something hit the back of my head. I turned around to see what it was. A cleaning cloth. I picked it up and got back to work. The tables were relatively easy. Next came wiping down the bar.
So, all in all, it only took me maybe three or so hours to clean all the surfaces in the bar. Now that I got a good look at the place it was Kinda cool looking.
While I was working I had noticed some wanted posters. I didn't stop to check them out at the time because I was busy. I didn't think it would hurt to take a short break and go and see them.
I was amazed. There were wanted posters for all kind of older pirates including Shiki the Golden Lion, "Dark King" Silvers Rayleigh, and Don Chinjao The Drill. There were even more of people I Had no idea of who they were. It was awesome, to say the least.
I was cut from my thoughts by a cough from behind me. I jerked around to see Raoul right behind me.
He was grinning.
"Hmm, Those were the good old days. Back then this place was full of pirates. Now I'm lucky to see any at all. That idiot smoker keeps stalking the nest and smashing the eggs before they can hatch. What a shame." He said his voice sounding melancholy and wistful. "what I wouldn't give to Have that again."
Yeah, I can understand why. I can only imagine the vast number of pirates to come through here for one last party before the grand line. In the East Blue, Loguetown, this is the last stop before Reverse Mountain. Stocking up on supplies and-
"So all these guys were pirates? How Cool~" Heather said from my side. Startling Raoul and I. I felt kinda bad for not introducing them beforehand but I tend to hyper-focus on certain tasks. I totally forgot that my little friend was with me. Oops, won't make that mistake again.
"Is your messenger bag talking?" he breathed out a sigh that seemed to say This is bullshit. "I'm just gonna assume devil fruit and leave it at that"
"Yeah, devil fruit, This is Heather, and he is a Cartoon Messenger Bag, Sorry I didn't introduce you earlier,"I said with an impish grin. It may be the only time I get to see this old man flustered.
"Come here boy, I got something for you." The old man sat a wrapped gift on the top of the bar. It was not an overly large box. It was wrapped in cloth.
"Thanks, old man," I said very sincerely It was incredibly nice of him.
"Hmph, Just open it you brat" he jokingly said. Well, someone is not used to compliments.
"I just love presents! There just so much fun." Heather said with a big cartoonish smile.
So I did as asked and opened the package. I gently took the cloth cover and it revealed a generic looking wooden box. I then preceded to open said box. Inside this little box was a horde of treasure. Not the gold or silver you would expect of treasure and not even Gems. The first thing I pulled out was a log pose. The second thing was a collection of four throwing knives and a Swiss army knife or a multi-tool as some people call it. A few books had been added into the box as well, one of them was labeled "A complete Compendium of Flora and their Uses: Grand line Edition" As I looked through them they were all books about the kinds of things one could expect to see in the grand line. There was even a book detailing tourist destinations on some of the more popular islands. As I looked through it there was even a small book detailing how one would go about using the log pose. I was honestly in heaven with all these books.
A Scottish novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott coined the phrase Book-Bosomed. That's me. Someone Who Doest want to leave the house without a book somewhere on my loved reading since I was a child.
I should perhaps look at the rest of the gifts. Raoul is beginning to look at me like I'm crazy. The only thing left in the box was What appeared to be a Flintlock .44 caliber six-shot revolver. With two boxes of ammo. I'm kinda, to be honest. It must have cost a lot of Beli. I only saw one gun this advanced in the anime. That was used by a Certain member of Baroque Works.
"I-i Cant accept this. It's too much." I stammer over the words, overwhelmed by his generosity. It was too much though. This all had to be quite expensive. It was most definitely more than what three hours of work were worth.
"You can and you will you little brat. It's from one dreamer to another." He said his smile wide open and friendly. He really is a good man.
"Okay, I'll accept this. Ill Dream even bigger then before and I'll take the Grand Line by storm. Nothing will stop me!" I said enthusiastically. I could feel Heather giggling beside me.
"You mean WE will take the Grandline by storm!" Heather Said Moving his little ribbon arms around.
"Yeah, I meant we, Heather. You think you can carry all this Stuff?" I say with a smile. I can already tell This is gonna be one for the records.
" Of course, I am the best after all." The weird thing was as soon as I started to put all the stuff in it disappeared.
"Oh god, Heather did it all go?!" I said panic was kinda setting in. I mean all that stuff was Important for our travels.
"Huh, I can still feel them inside me. Try pulling out something." Heather said trying to calm the situation.
So I did as He said and Dug into the pink lining of the bag trying to find the Multi-purpose tool I had put in there Earlier. As soon as I thought of what I wanted I felt my hand grasp something at the bottom of the bag. I pulled it out and there was the multi-purpose tool. It looked different than when I had put it in Heather. It looked more like something you would see in a Saturday morning cartoon. The words "All Purpose Multi-tool Brought to you by ACME" Were on the side of it. Is this one of The toon fruits powers? Does anything put in Heather become a toon version of Its self? What does Is the effect of it becoming toon styled?
" Oh, How cool that felt wierd~," Heather said with great enthusiasm. My bag is certifiably crazy. No doubt about it.
I examine the tool more closely. I slowly undid one of the holding latches and a comically large toothbrush with toothpaste already on it came out.
"Well, I suppose I won't have to worry about any Sea kings having bad Hygiene. I can Brush their teeth as they eat me." I said with a giggle.
I slowly did the toothbrush back in. How such a large toothbrush fit in the small swiss army knife I have no idea. All I can even begin to contemplate is that its Cartoon Physics. As I played around with the tool I found it had a whole bunch of weird and ridiculous Tools. I mean Some of it could in certain situations be useful. Like the expandable spyglass that looked flat till you flipped it 180 degrees and it came out looking like a telescope or the glue gun that apparently doesn't need electricity. Oh and my favorite of all the wonderfully odd things that come with this thing? A freaking blow torch. Yeah, I can hardly believe it myself. This cartoon physics is giving me a headache.
Oh, yeah another wonderful thing regarding the Swiss army knife, it has a Dispenser for aspirin. Another thing I kinda wanted to know at the moment was where was it getting the aspirin from?
"Hmm, I'm all most positive it didn't do all that fancy stuff when I was still using it. Pfhafhahaha" the old man said he was having a hard time trying to get it all out though, because of all the laughing he was doing. It was pretty funny, seeing everything you ever thought possible being broken down by a swiss army knife that got turned into a cartoon version of itself by a talking messenger bag. I'm pretty sure that all that bullshit is the start of a joke.
While I Continued messing around with the multi-tool I found a tiny button on the back of the thing that let me pull out a few of the more reasonable Tools. Like a shovel, pickaxe, and a regular old woodcutting ax to name a few. They were all a size or two bigger then you would normally see them as though. The odd thing about all this though? The weight of the object never changed. I mean some of the things coming out of this had to weigh close to at least fifty or so pounds if not more. As I continued my examination of the cartoon Swiss army knife it slowly started to change back into a plain old boring everyday Multi-tool. I was done with it anyway so I put it back Inside of Heather.
"Ugh, I'm so tired," Heather said and then immediately fell asleep. Little Cartoon Zzz's were coming from Him now.
So did taking something out that had been toonified use energy from Heather? Is that why he got tired all of a sudden? I had only had the multi-tool out for fifteen minutes at the most. So would bigger things take more energy so therefore have less time to be toonified or is it the amount of Law breaking physics that the object does that uses more power? Is it a combination of both or is it that its outside of Heather, who made the object that expands energy? I was so not the right person figure all this out. I have only a tiny bit of knowledge on the whole physics thing. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.
"Well, that was sure odd, Huh?" I said looking over at Raoul. He just laughed and smiled at me shaking his head.
"You are in for some crazy adventures that's all I can say for sure"
Two weeks of helping out Raoul at the bar and making it a bit more modern while still trying to keep that old school feels about it. I was set to hand out and post on message boards handwritten flyers.
That wasn't the only thing I had been doing these last two weeks. Heather and I had been Training. Heather on making his creations last longer. We worked on figuring out the current limits of his devil fruit powers. He was letting off a force I can only describe as toon force. So far I can walk five steps off the table and not fall, only if I don't look down. It is quite an odd sensation. The air I walked on felt just like the ground until I looked down. Then all semblance of Gravity rights itself and the faux ground I was standing on just disappears. I'm sure there are other ways to manipulate the Toon force but it will take time and experimentation.
Though I have concluded that the Toon Toon devil fruit is Paramecia in its origins. It still does a lot of weird things. I'm under the assumption that because Heather is a messenger bag some of the properties of his devil fruit have changed because of his unorthodox body.
While I had been working on my stamina. In my world, I was not exactly physically fit. I knew that to survive I would have to put myself through Hellish training. I'm not gonna lie my body always ached afterward. The weird thing is though I could now run for almost a whole mile, though my speed is still pretty bad, or so Raoul says. We had also worked on using the Swiss army knife as a weapon. We were making some progress. What I mean by some is that I'm finally getting the hang of my weapon never being anything practical.
I had also put an old frying pan inside, It came out, to say the least. As in the round part becoming three times bigger than normal with a three-foot-long handle. To be honest I was getting pretty good at swinging it around. It weighed the same as a regular pan would. Out of all my weapons so far this is the one I'm most proficient at working with.
This world continues to make no sense to me, But what the heck, I just keep rolling with the punches it throws at me
Raoul had also begun teaching me the basics of using a gun. The Thing is I'm not very good. Sure after hours of practice I was getting better but I still couldn't hit the bullseye from 60 feet away. Fun side notes The cartoon gun had big round googly eyes on it. They In no way helped or hindered me. They just moved comically while I was firing or moving the gun. It did seem to have weird bullets though. Even if I put in regular bullets they still turned out odd. Rubber bullets that made a laughing sound after they hit something, salt rounds that exploded everywhere on impact and little toothpick sized pieces of wood could shoot out of it with slightly comical banners attached saying things like Bang and Your It. It could also double as a squirt gun. Comical yet impractical. The water was just that water. Also, I had given the gun a name. His name was Winchester. I thought it was kinda funny because of the whole salt thing.
I had also begone Reading the books given to me by Raoul. I'm gonna be honest. Most of them were relatively dry to read. Though I did learn quite a bit about the plant life in the Grand Line and old medicinal uses that some of them had. It was interesting, though whoever had written the book was purely settled in the academics, You could tell by the Long winded description and straight to the point style of writing on the plant life. I could definitely see the benefits of using herbs to help. I had even started my own collection of herbs and flowers with useful parts.
As I got more and more interested in the subject, Raoul told me to go see Mrs. Akane. Akane was a woman in her late eighties with white hair. She is absolutely brilliant. Her understanding of Flora was incredible to me. She was a true herbalist. I learned quite a bit from her. She wouldn't teach me much due to the fact that I wouldn't apprentice under her due to the time constraints. She did find it in the goodness of her heart to give me a few tricks and tips to help me. Though my understanding of the subject had skyrocketed with her help. I was still an extream novice. It would take years and years of practice to get anywhere near her level. She assured me that there were even better herbalists out there then her. While I believed her, it was unthinkable at the moment. I had found a subject that I liked in my old life and had reawakened in this world. As I thought about it, it wasn't so much a dream as an aspiration I would learn all I could about herbs and become an herbalist. I may never be a very good fighter but I could help in other ways.
I was getting a little antsy waiting for Luffy and the gang. I mean I don't mind waiting for him, but come on, two weeks is a bit much. Though I was happy to know that he was getting closer. Just the other day I read the paper and found his bounty poster. That means according to canon they should be heading in this direction. I'm not gonna lie, I kept the poster. It was the only hope I had that he would accept me. My nerves had continued to skyrocket the longer I waited.
For all my bolster that I would be a part of the straw hats, I was worried. Would they accept me? I've never really had good friends in my old world. I mostly hung out with my cousin. So I'm not particularly good at making friends. I've always been weird and nonconventional. Most of the people around me hated me for something I couldn't control even if I had wanted to and it stings. It made me wonder and question how or why the Straw Hats would want me.
I needed to stop with the depressing thought process otherwise I would fall apart.
So As I stopped reliving the last two weeks in my head I started back my attempt at cleaning the back room of the bar. I heard the main door open. I knew Raoul was sitting out front at one of the tables. Enjoying a nice glass of rum. That old man had the good stuff for sure. As I was leaving the back to see what the commotion was out front as I heard a voice I would recognize from anywhere.
"He was cool Gold Roger, wasn't he? More pirates should be like him. That's why I went out to sea. To explore the Grand Line and Find One Piece. I'm gonna be King of the Pirates." I heard Luffy say. Oh now didn't that just make the fanboy in me squee a little? I heard Raoul Gasp and opened the door. He looked as if he had seen a ghost and if I remembered correctly he probably was. Oh, my god, I'll get my chance soon.
"That's a crazy thing to say. Especially in a place like this," Raoul said He sounded astonished. I was internally laughing, Luffy apparently had that effect on people.
"But I'm just telling the truth," Luffy said sounding confused.
"Well, boy after having a customer like you. A special drink is in order." The old man said making his way to the bar. He saw me peaking from the open back door and grinned at me.
"Aww, you don't have to do that for me" The straw hat captain let out.
"Nonsense my mind is made up," Raoul said as he began searching in a cabinet for the special bottle.
"I'm sorry I didn't mean to Overhear, But you want to be the Pirate King, Right? My names O'Brannon Rayjay. I Cant help but share my own dream after hearing a dream crazier than my own. I wanna Have an adventure that will leave me without a single regret." I said Smiling my Megawatt smile. I start to tell him I want to join him on his crazy quest but was interrupted by Heather.
"My Dream Is to Collect a souvenir from Every Island On the Grand Line, and I only accept the best stuff! So, can we join you, captain?" Heather blurted out. Throwing His little ribbon arm up.
My heart rocketed This was it the moment of truth. This was the make it or break it point. I just hope Luffy was willing to take us with him.
"ITS A TALKING BAG! So Cool~" Luffy shouted with stars in his eyes. It was quite disconcerting, to be honest.
"Hey, I'm not just some bag" Heather let out with a hint of disdain "I'm the Best messenger bag to ever exist."
"So what do you say? Can we come along and sail the grand line with you and accomplish our dreams?" I let out with every fiber of hope in my being.
"Shishishi, Sure," He said with a massive grin. "Follow me we got Pirate adventures to do!"As he rushed out the door forgetting all about the drink Raoul had poured for him. I took the glass downed it. Aww, that's the good rum, yum.
"Bye old man thank you for everything but it seems my captain is here and its time for me to go," I said with a certain sadness I would miss the old man. My adventure was just starting though. I had to follow it to the end of the grand line. I dashed after my captain.
"Take care you brat" Was the last thing I heard before I was out of there.
One thing about Luffy is he is fast. Incredibly so. If I didn't know his chosen destination I would have been without a captain. I headed to the execution platform. The place were Gol D Rogers said his last words that sparked the great pirate era.