OH MA GAWD, I HAVE FOLLOWERS, WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN?! And why does it feel like I'm starting a cult? But anyway, here's the next chapter. Not as long as the last one but somehow I still got it passed the four thousand word mark without realizing it... And it could have been longer... I honestly don't know how that works, I just write.

Disclaimer: I don't own One Piece. Never have, never will. What I do own is my OCs and my sketch book.

"Brilliant. Just brilliant! Drop me in a world with no way to communicate, why don'tcha? Oh, wait—you already did!" Sam yelled as she kicked a pebble on the ground in her mini rant. The sun had risen about an hour ago, casting shadows across the small clearing that she had found in the forest. She had made her way there after gawking at Zoro for a little while. She wanted to be sure that she was in Shells Town before she did anything.

Luckily, Zoro had been the only one to see her, but really people? What Marine Base doesn't have patrols or something at night? What if pirates attacked? The screaming villagers would wake them up?

She almost, almost, wanted to walk right up to captain Morgan and tell him that he was an idiot and that he needed to set up patrols at once, but she liked her health the way it was, thank you. And there was the little thing about them speaking Japanese, of all things. Yes, she knows a random word or two, and recognized some phases, but that was it. Not enough to hold a conversation with, nor talk back to a Marine Captain.

"Grah," she groaned as she held her head in her hands and dropped to the ground to sit there with her legs crossed and her head in her lap. She let out a tired sigh and laced her fingers together and braced her forehead against them to stare at the ground. What does she do now? Not only does she not know the language, but she doesn't know anyone here either, and knowing characters from a manga and anime doesn't count.

Sighing, she straighten and pulled off her bag and brought it to her lap. One quick look told her she still had everything, and that they were all in one piece. (Ha, pun.) She quickly checked her pockets as well, and was pleased to find that her notebook and pencil were still there, along with her wallet. Like American money is going to do me any good… she thought bitterly as she opened her wallet to check if her ID and money, though now useless, was still there.

Her eyes widen in surprise and she pulled out one of the bills that were tucked neatly in the folds of the wallet. The bill she pulled out wasn't an American dollar but…

"Beli?" Sam said, not believing her eyes. She looked at the bill in her hands her a second longer before she looked back into her wallet. Sure enough, every single dollar bill had been turned into Beli. I stared at the bills as I fingered through them. The blonde tried to count them, but she didn't really know how the currency system worked in One Piece, only that it was modeled after the yen. She considered the money in her wallet for one more moment before jumping to her feet and shaking her fist at the sky.

"Beli, you give my beli but you don't give me a fucking translator!?" she hollered at the sky in her anger. "Come on, people! What good is money if I don't understand anyone?!" her yells rang through the air and she growled under her breath and started pacing the small clearing.

She had to make a plan of action. Running into things blind wasn't that safe of a plan, and running around like an idiot could end just as badly. She knows about where she is; Shells Town in the East Blue, but she doesn't know when. She knows a rough estimate from the fact that Zoro was here, but the here and now could be a week, days, or even hours away from Luffy chaotically waltzing his way into the quiet town.

She stopped as she backtracked her thoughts. Luffy. He was coming here, that much was for sure, but the question was; what was she going to do about it?

The answer? She doesn't know.

Every One Piece fan's dream is to join the crew, but Sam wasn't going to kid herself. She didn't know the language, she didn't know how to even use the money here, she was basically as useful as a cardboard box in a fight at the moment, and many more things she didn't care to list. Yes, she was tempted to try her hand and see if Luffy would let her join, but as she was, she would just be dead weight. And that ship doesn't need dead weight, not with what she knows they'll be doing.

No, she decide, I'm not going to join, even if I really, really want to try and change the plot, they'll be just fine without me. They were before. With that decided, Sam went about another question that has been plaguing her mind; how the hell does she use her Devil Fruit?

She stopped her pacing and looked down at her hands. Aquarius had said that the fruit she had eaten had been the 'Buff' or 'Boost' fruit, and gave her the ability to give her a boost of any kind. He hadn't said if there was a limit on what kind of boost, but seeing as he said 'to herself' means that she can't be giving other people speed or power boost. In theory, at least. But, when he had said 'Buff', it had given her an idea.

What if her Devil Fruit ability acted like the buffs from video games? If that was true, than the number of buffs she could make where truly limited by only her imagination. That met a whole lot of trolling in the future, but only if she figured out how to activate the damn thing.

The blonde closed her eyes and tried to imagine herself faster. It wasn't really hard, all she had to do was imagine herself keeping pace with a car on the highway, like when you're bored and you imagine someone running along the side of the road. She opened her eyes and looked down at herself. She didn't feel any different, and a quick run around the clearing told her that that method hadn't worked.

She frowned and knotted her eyebrows together as she looked down at herself. Clearly imagining the desired outcome wasn't going to cut it, so what will? In all the episodes and manage chapters she's read, the characters call out the name of what they're about to do, but…

"You have got to be kidding me…" Sam said as she looked at her hand. "Please, oh please be kidding me…" She cringed away from an unseen being and brought her hands up over her head seemingly to protect herself from the very idea. Sucking in a breath, she said slowly, "Speed Boost."

As if some higher being was mocking her, Sam suddenly felt a rush of energy pass over and through her body and her eyes widen. At the same moment she felt the energy going through her, a set of softly glowing blue rings passed from over her head to her feet. They were barely there for a second, and when they passed, a faint almost unnoticeable blue aura settled over her skin, about a centimeter thick.

She stared at her hands in disbelief before looking up and leveling a tree on the edge of the clearing with a nervous, but almost gleeful look. She bent her knees and braced herself, then she pushed off with all the strength she could muster. The very next second she was throwing her hands out and digging her heels into the dirt to stop herself from running face first in to the tree. When she finally stopped, her nose was only an inch away from the trunk.

She stumbled away from the tree and tripped over her own two feet, landing on her butt in the dirt. She stared at the tree with eyes wide with shock and panting heavily. She looked down at her shaking hands. A few long moments passed in silence until an impossible wide grin grew on her lips and she started giggling hysterically. The next minute found her throwing her head back as she laughed so hard she was left out of breath clutching her stomach.

Half an hour later, she finally stopped laughing and straightened up, her impossible wide grin still in place. A few more giggles made their way past her lips as she returned to her crossed legged position. She looked at her hand and waved it around in the air.

It felt… strange. Like when she was running, she saw everything in slow-motion like she was just walking on a morning stole, but she also knew—felt —everything moving faster than they should. It had felt like minutes were passing, but at the same time felt like time was passing normally. It was disorienting, and it surprised her so that instead of trying to run around the tree, she ended up panicking and stopping herself.

She giggled as she watched her hand wave through the air. It was strange watching it move, everything slowed down as she moved around her hand (through she could still feel time moving normally, if that made any sense) and noticed that the faint blue aura glowed a little brighter and left strikes in the air. There was also what could be an after image of her hand as she changed directions.

Sam stopped moving her hand, and the world went back to normal and the aura returned to its near invisible state. She fluxed her hand and moved in more carefully than before, resulting in her movements being slow and calculated. The result was, however, the blue glowed barely brighter than it was normally and fainter, shorter strikes, but the world didn't do its weird slow-down-but-stay-the-same thing. Sam grinned. So she could control the speed at which she moved, she just had to be careful about it. Now the next item on the list:

How to turn the damn thing off.

Sam's grin dropped as she considered the question serious. How did she turn it off? She didn't want to always have a speed boost, though it would be useful, but it was disorienting and would probable give her a headache after a while. So, to find a way to cancel her ability in a timely manner. For all she know, the thing could run on a timer. But from want she could gather from what she felt, it didn't, so she needed a way to drop it. Wait, drop…

Sam sat up straight and looked down at herself with a determined, but curious expression. "Drop," she said, her voice even, and at once, she felt the feeling of energy passing over and through her body, though this time it was leaving instead of entering. Like before, several softly glowing blue rings passed over her body, though unlike before, they started at her feet and ended over her head. The blue aura that had covered her body also faded.

What was new, though, was the sudden ache in her muscles, mostly in her legs and her one arm. She frowned at that and considered her aching arm seriously. So, after the boost, or 'buff' as she was starting to call it, was 'dropped', the physical effects of moving at those speeds finally take affected the body. So if her lefts a hundred pounds, it won't feel like she lifted a hundred pounds until after the effect was dropped. That would be worrying in an actual fight, because she knew she would have to move at those speed and faster if she wanted to survive the Grand Line, even if she only went into Paradise, and for much longer periods of time too. Hopefully she would get used to the stress of using her Devil Fruit.

Hopefully.

But actually using the Speed Boost in a fight would take some time to get used to, seeing that as soon as she tried to move faster than normal, her view of the world warped and she got disoriented. And she didn't even want to think what it would feel like to use a Strength Boost or the stress it'll put on her body. Oh, the horror.

(But that got her curious, what would a Defense Boost or Attack Boost feel like?)

Well, if she doesn't do too much heavy lifting, then it shouldn't hurt too bad, right? So, pushing her doubts aside, she sat up straight and took a deep breath, readying herself and—stopped short, a look of horror crossing her features.

"Oh my God," she breathed in a horrified whisper. She leaned her head back and pressed the heel of her palms to her eyes. "I have voice activated powers. I have voice activated powers." She leaned back far enough that gravity took over and she fell on her back, groaning up at the sky.

"God damn-it," she groaned. She almost felt embarrassed that she had to say what she was doing before doing it, but then remembered that no one else could probable understand her, though she had to be careful of people recognizing what she's saying after a while. And, she reasoned, if this world was anything like the manga and anime, everyone else would be shouting attacks too. Besides the embarrassing part, at least listening to other peoples' attack names would give her a heads up on what they're going to do next.

But still, voice activated powers? Who has that anyway?

Suddenly, her stomach protested with a loud growl and the blonde groaned. Now that she thought about it, she hadn't eaten breakfast yet, and for her, breakfast was hours ago, though in Shells Town it was just starting for some late risers.

Almost at once, her stomach growled again and Sam's thoughts turned from the embarrassment of yelling out attacks (like, who has time for that in the middle of a battle anyway?) to food. She started drooling about all the things she could eat for (a late) breakfast and licked her lips. Half way through though, she stopped and adopted a confused expression. Something in her mouth didn't feel right…

She ran her tongue over her teeth again and stopped when she felt something long and pointy where one of her canines should be. She rolled her tongue over that canine for a minute before moving on to the next one. After a few minutes, she found that all four of her canines where longer and pointier than she remembered them being, though how she just found this out is beyond her.

She remembered Aquarius saying something about changes in appearance but not what would change. She sat up quickly and crawled over to her discarded bag that was laying a few feet away from her. Grabbing it, she opened the main pocket and searched frantically for her sunglasses. She doesn't have a mirror and she doesn't want to go looking for a reflective surface on the off chance that people could see her before she had a chance to see herself. Luckily though, her sunglasses had reflective lenses, so she had and improvised mirror already on her.

She found her sunglasses quickly enough and pulled them out. When she pointed the reflective side towards herself, she blinked in surprise and then blinked again to make sure she wasn't seeing thing. Sure enough, the two eyes in the lenses blinked back at the same time as her and she stared in wonder.

Instead of a pair of forest green eyes looking back at her, Sam saw a pair of striking sea-blue eyes that shone like jewels even though no light shone on them. And, instead of normal pupils that were round, these ones had a slight diamond shape to them, and the blonde could already imagine them turning into thin little slits when she walks into bright sun light.

She stared at her new set of eyes (it felt proper to call them that) for another minute before remembering her original mission and bared her teeth. Not much to her surprise because she had expected as much as soon as she felt them, all four of her canines where longer and definitely pointier. She clicked her teeth together a few time and nodded her head in solemn acceptance. It would definitely hurt now if she bit her tongue.

Note to self: DON'T BITE TONGUE

After a few more minutes of angling the sunglass in different ways, Sam found that everything else about her was mostly the same. The only other major difference? She had gills, and they tickled. Sam stared at them in wonder as she gentle ran a finger over one side of her neck, where her gills were. She giggled as her finger passed over them. The only reason she had seen them was because she had tilted her head to the side, which had made them stand out, otherwise they were barely visible lines on both sides of her neck.

Well, I guess that's what the scarf is for, the blonde thought as she ran a finger down the length of one of the gills, making her giggle. And they're sensitive. Something I'll have to watch out for, she thought with a grimace. She'll just have to make sure no one grabs her around the neck in a fight. That would not be fun.

Her stomach growled loudly again and she sighed. Looks like she'll have to go into town for some food. She gave her sunglasses one last look before putting them on. She didn't know how the town's people would react to her new appearance and didn't want the marines on her ass just yet. In fact, she never wanted them casing her. That would be bad for her health.

She quickly stuffed her notebook and wallet back into her back pocket and swung her bag over her shoulders as she got to her feet. Taking a moment to orient herself, she turned and started walking towards Shells Town. She walked for roughly ten minutes before she stepped out of the forest and onto the cobblestone road that lead into town. She paused for a moment, looking at everyone warily. When no one as much as looked in her direction she squared her shoulders and walked farther into town.

The familiar but still not understandable sound of Japanese reached her ears as she walked down the street. She looked around with wide eyes, trying to take everything in, not at all ashamed that she felt like a tourist. The people she passed on the street gave her sideways glances but she ignored them and in return they ignored her. She was careful though to make sure that her scarf covered her gills and made sure she didn't show any teeth when she smiled. She didn't know how they would react and she didn't fancy having an angry mob after her.

Soon enough, the blonde found the street where the market had set up and made a beeline to the nearest food stall. The first one she come across sold an array of fruits. Apples, oranges, pears, pineapples… and price signs!

Sam almost cried for joy when she saw that in front of each basket of fruit was a price that told you how much one of each fruit was so she didn't have to even ask the woman selling the fruit for the price. Ignoring the woman who was talking to her (she didn't understand her anyway, for all she knew she could be talking to the guy next to her) Sam eyed the different prices on the fruit as she reached for her wallet.

Deciding on what she wanted to buy, Sam waved to get the attention of the sales woman and held up two fingers and pointed to the apples and the pears. She really hoped the woman got her meaning, because she didn't want to make a scene. She looked unsure for a moment and said something while holding up two fingers and pointing at the apples and then the pears.

Sam hesitated for a slit second before nodding in affirmation. The woman chirped something again and huffed in annoyance as she grabbed the right amount apples and pears and put them in a bag. Probable mad that I didn't speak, Sam thought idly as she handed over the right amount of money and took the bag with her food. The money system was pretty easy to understand. All you had to do was look at the number on the bill and match it to the price tag, adding more bills if need be. Thankfully Sam had just the right amount of money for the fruit and left with a quick bow of thanks to the woman.

Walking back down the street after pocketing her wallet, Sam reached into the bag and pulled out one of her apples. She looked it over for a moment before taking a chuck out of it. Munching on it as she went, Sam let her mind and eyes wonder. Now that she wasn't trying to puzzle out her new abilities or on the hunt for food, she could focus on another important thing that had to be done.

Getting a letter to her parents.

Via Message-in-a-Bottle.

Scanning the area for any empty bottles she could snag for her message, Sam eventually spotted a dumpster in an alley near the docks that had a few bottles scattered around it. Spinning on the heel of her feet, Sam changed directions and made her way to the alley. Once she neared it, she threw her apple core into the dumpster and stooped down to sort through the bottles.

Finding one that didn't have any cracks and still had its cork mysteriously, the blonde stood and exited the alley and headed for the docks. The docks weren't very busy, just like in the show, so Sam easily found a place to sit in the shade to write her letter.

She took out her notebook and pencil and opened it to a new page. She brought the pencil down to rest of the page and—stopped. She had no idea what to say. What do you tell your parents when you suddenly took a job from waterman and got sent to a whole 'nother universe? Hey, mom, guess what? I'm millions of miles away from home in a world full of monsters that can destroy a mountain with a single punch, but don't worry! I'm perfectly healthy and happy!-?

Ha-ha—yeah, how 'bout no.

Sam pondered the problem as she watch people walk pass. Some of them looked her way for a moment before continuing on their way. Once she even saw want looked like a marine patrol walk passed. Even as they walked passed and gave her pointed looks she stared at them in disbelief. So you have patrols during the day but not at night when you really need them?! I can't believe you people! She thought and looked to the heavens.

Shaking her head at the marines as they rounded a corner and walking out of sight, she turned back to her unwritten letter with a frown. She stayed that way for a half hour, mauling over what had happened and how she could explain it, when she sighed in defeat. She'd write a brief summary of what happened—she didn't have a lot of space on the paper—and prayed that her parents believed her before they started a nationwide man hunt.

Writing in neat tiny scripted, Sam had her letter done and safely in the bottle she had found within the hour. She had even washed the bottle out to make sure there wasn't any of what was in it before (probable something alcoholic) she put her letter inside.

Standing, the blonde walked to the end of the pier and stood facing the ocean. She looked down at the bottle in her hand and then back at the sea in front of her. After a moment of silence, she shrugged and cocked her arm back. She gave the bottle a good toss and watched it sail through the air turning end over end. She watched as it reach the height of its journey before gravity took hold and pulled it back towards the water. She watched as it got closer and closer to the water until—

It got caught by a hand of water.

Sam's jaw hit the wood of the pier as she watched the hand wave back at her cheerfully before pulling itself and the bottle underwater and out of sight. Sam didn't know how long she stood there, but eventually she picked her jaw up off the ground and turned around.

She walked all the way back to her little clearing in the woods in a daze and only when she had seated herself on the ground and leaned back against a tree did she let the first tired groan escape her. "What have I gotten myself into…?" she muttered as she ran a hand over her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose.

Sighing for what felt like the hundredth time that day before standing. She placed her two bags on the ground by the tree and walked to the center of the clearing. She does a few stretches to loosen up her muscles before taking a deep breath. She holds it for a second before releasing it.

"Speed Boost," Sam says and watches the rings pass over her body leaving behind the faint blue aura. A grin makes its way onto her face. "Well, I might as well practice," she said.

She was back again, looking even worse for wear than the day before but somehow still the same wide smile on her face when she saw him. The pirate hunter had tried to scare her off the first night she had shown up out of nowhere, and had thought he had succeeded, with how she had hightailed it out of there, but the next day after sunset, she was back again.

He had at first tried warning her away with the marines, and when that didn't work, he moved onto plain open threats and insults. But no matter what he said to her, she always just seemed to shrug it off and continued to trick around. Though, in all honesty, he doubted she even understood him.

She spoke a whole different language. One that Zoro was sure he had heard somewhere before but had no idea on how to actually speak it. Which left him to try and scare the girl away with mean looks and rude tones. She would just laugh though, and smile at him with a strange light in her eyes, like she knew something he didn't. That only made him more determined to make her leave.

Somehow, in the middle of their second meeting, she had weaseled out his name while telling him hers. Sam, she had said, and she looked so damn happy when he called her that that the swordsman almost felt bad about how cold he was being to her.

He just couldn't get a read on the girl. One minute she would be all sunshine and smiles, and the next she falls silent and looks like the weight of the world is on her shoulders. Whenever she saw him looking, she would just give him a tired smile and wave off his curious look. And when she finally left for who knows where, the courtyard would just feel a little bit emptier.

She didn't just stop by during the dark hours of the night either. Sometimes he would see her hanging around the walls of the base. Sometimes just sitting on top of them or walking along the top until one of the marine would yell at her to get down. She would give them the finger, but otherwise comply with their wishes.

She had also made a habit of playing her small handheld instrument whenever she went near the base. Sometime playing what sounded like songs and others just playing notes at random.

She stayed completely clear of the marines though, to the point of when she saw one she would actively try to put as much distance in-between them as possible. The only exception to the rule was rule was the bastard son. She would instead actively mess with him. Anything from purposely playing loud enough to annoy him or sneaking up right behind him and playing a note, only to stay behind him when he turned around.

Besides her obvious trolling of the marines on the base, which both of them found hilarious, she hung out in town playing her instrument for some of the kids or in the forest doing who-knows-what. Zoro highly suspected that she lived in the forest, with the amount of leaves and dirt she would have in her hair or on her clothes at times. Not that he was worried, just wondered why she wouldn't stay in the town or in an inn or something.

Sam covered her mouth as she yawned. She hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, which was to be expected when you sleep on the forest flood while your muscles feel like they've been torn apart. One thing she's found out about the boosts in the past week is that though they give her a defiant leg up in speed, power, and what not, the draw backs are pretty painful.

Speed Boost and Strength Boost are just that, makes her faster and stronger, but when they're dropped, and the muscles she had used feeling like she just put them through a workout from hell, twice. Attack Boost, which just make her hits more destructive, leaves her with sensitive skin. Defense Boost, which made her skin and bones harder to break, left her limbs feeling like lead. And the more she used them when activated, the greater the effects.

She couldn't wait to use them in a fight though, while at the same time she never wanted to use them in a fight for fear of how it would feel afterward. Oh the horror…

She passed by the fruit seller from her first day in town and offered her a smile. The woman cheerfully smiled back and waved her over before pointing at the fruit in front of her and waiting patiently. It hadn't taken long for the town's people to realize that she couldn't understand them and most of them came together to help her learn some of the language. The marines helped too, when neither the bastard son (whose name she couldn't remember to save her life) or his equally bastard father wasn't anywhere nearby.

(Though when she had been cornered by the housewives and children, she had been utterly terrified. They came out of nowhere, like fucking ninja. One second she was quietly eating her apple, and the next she was being taken away and told the names of different things that people pointed out. And the kids continued to get the jump on her at least once a day.)

"Ringo, nashi, orenji, painappuru," she rambled off as she pointed to each fruit in turn. The sales woman beamed at her and the man in the next stall, who sold vases, nodded with a smile as well.

"Yoi! Yoi! Sate, dono yō ni ōku no?" She said and waited patiently for Sam to translate what she had said and form a response.

Slowly, Sam responded but held up two fingers anyway. "Ringo, orenji, ni shite kudasai?" her grammar was absolutely horrible, but as long as she got the message across, at this point she didn't care. The woman smiled kindly though, and grabbed two apples and two oranges. Sam paid for the fruit and went on my way. Another good thing the town's people did was find easy odd jobs for her to do when she was in town for money. If they didn't do that, she would have been out of money at this point.

The blonde walked down the street, swinging her bag of fruit that would serve as her food for the day and hummed the tune to Brink's Sake to herself. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught the sight of a red vest and a straw hat. Stopping, she looked back and couldn't stop the grin that broke out in full force on her face.

Monkey D. Luffy has arrived.

Translations, in order:

Apple, pear, orange, pineapple.

Good! Good! Now, how many?

Apple, orange, two please?

So, question: How did you like Zoro's p.o.v.? Should I switch p.o.v.s more often or just stick to Sam's and my other OCs (yes, there will be more) p.o.v.? I can work with either one, so just let me what you guys think and I'll see what I can do.

(Also, was Zoro in character? I have absolutely no idea if I did his character justice.)