"Please sign the extra-dimensional form on the second line."
"No ma'am, I'm afraid tesseract-induced travel damages are not covered under your existence plan."
"May I recommend our planar displacement bonus packages, sir? They guarantee a second attempt should you meet your untimely demise before your desired goal!"
"I'm sorry, but the ability to forcefully choose a love interest is only available to Plus Souls clients."
Sitting on the bench, listening to the inane (but insane) chatter around me, I did the one thing I could in a situation like this: I waited. My feet shuffled on the floor, hands tucked between my knees as I nervously eyed the line of young men and women to my sides, all seated in similar plastic seats. Around us, crystalline walls formed small cubicles, each one seated by a woman or man in a pristine blue-and-gold three-piece suit and with two small wings protruding from behind their ears, talking eagerly with the people that had already been called as they showcased translucent forms and pamphlets that I couldn't quite make out from this distance. To the right, a figure clad in engraved plate-armor calmly ushered new arrivals through a beautifully-crafted metal archway, politely asking that they empty their pockets whenever the arch beeped with a chime.
And above everyone's heads, on the immaculate marble walls, a sign hung proudly with text written in silver cursive.
TRANS-DIMENSIONAL RELOCATION CELESTIAL ENTERPRISES
How did I get myself in this situation…
…
Oh, yeah.
-O-
"Dammit, I'm gonna be late!"
I rushed up the steep incline of my hometown, munching on a cereal bar and backpack bumping against my back. I looked down at my watch… 2:05pm. 25 minutes to run the rest of the 3 kilometers to school. I felt the wind brushing against my hair, careful not to trip on the loose rocks on the sidewalk. Ahead, I saw the crosswalk, ready for—
"… Wait a second."
I stopped just short of the crosswalk, cereal bar hanging like a cigar from my mouth. The train of thought that went by my head was quite simple:
An empty street.
Food hanging from my mouth.
Being late.
Running headlong onto said street without too much attention.
I took a few more seconds to look to the sides, yet I saw nothing. No parked cars, no pedestrians, not even birds or animals. Just me, the street, and the passing duster that a stray breeze kicked up. I pondered for a few seconds, before carefully putting my foot forward, just over the edge…
And reeled back immediately as a truck seemed to materialize out of thin air and dashed past me, billowing dust behind it and barely missing my extended foot. I fell back on the floor, my impact against the floor thankfully cushioned by my backpack. But in a few seconds, I stood up again and brushed the dirt off my clothes.
"Oh-hoho… Nice try there, buddy. But it'll take more than that to send me to another world," I said with an amused chuckle, taking a triumphant step forward a second later-
WHAM!
-O-
Yeah, gotta say, I was not expecting the second truck. You'd think they'd give up after the first shot, and yet here I was…
"Number 4487603528, please step forward to booth 114."
I peered down at the small slip of paper that had been given to me, and saw the long-numbered sequence just spoken. A quick glance to the side found me booth 114, a green crystal light hovering lazily over it. A single chair sat right beneath it, and right in front, a counter with another attendant behind it. The only unique feature on her, unfortunately, were her cyan-crystal eyes and long blonde ponytail. Bar that, she… honestly looked just like any other member of this… group? Organization? Company, we'll go with company.
"Hello there!" she chimed out cheerfully, her head tilted slightly to the side. "I am pleased to offer Celestial Enterprises' services to you!" As she spoke, the girl began sifting through large stacks of papers I had not realized were behind her desk until I approached, all of them expertly hidden away from view in what had to be an intentional action.
"Umm… Thank you…" I half-mumbled as I sat myself on the chair. No surprise, it was just a size smaller than it should be for someone my size, but then again considering my experience with office chairs that was to be expected. "Pardon me asking, but… what exactly am I doing here?"
"Well, you see, we at Celestial Enterprises pride ourselves in delivering premium extra-planar vacation services for the almost infinitely numbered mortals residing in the multiverse. To allow things to be fair to such beings, however, we run a raffle listing every living sentient being in the multiverse, and then bring them here so they can be given their experience free of charge! If you're chosen, a representative of our company shall meet with you and allow you the chance to accept your prize, or pass it on to the next lucky winner!"
"Oh, I… see…"
"Indeed, sir!" she added with an almost sickeningly sweet amount of cheer, one hand continuously taking paper sheets from the piles she had hidden away while the other one, grasping a shining cosmic-looking pen, blurred with movement as she filled out the paperwork with speed and professionalism that would have made any office worker melt from jealousy.
As I watched her continue to pull out form after form (the pile of which was now growing worriedly big), however, a thought struck me. Something regarding what she had just described of the process of the raffle.
"… Wait, can I ask a question?"
"Of course, sir!"
"You… said a representative would talk to me about it, right?"
It was like a switch had been flipped. Almost instantly, her entire body locked up like it had been struck by lightning, the hand holding the pen locking up and scratching half the page with a thick line of ink. Unfortunately for me and my ignorant ass, instead of noticing that, I turned around to stare at all the people behind me, just in time to catch a glimpse of a giant humanoid lion being gently led by another attendant to some other cubicle off to the side. "Cause I mean, I get that it's probably cause of the whole 'being spiritually more evolved' stuff or something, but… is the truck always the choice? Cause it didn't really give me much of a choice… or explanation… you know? Maybe, I dunno, some kind of robot or… some… thing…"
It was at that moment that I chose to turn back around.
I was greeted with the image of a young woman violently shaking like she was a dryer someone had thrown a brick into, her pen clattering to the floor and papers slowly beginning to scatter as slowly, deliberately, she reached up to her head and cradled it, running her hands through her hair…
"… WAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!"
Before breaking down in the most overdone crying fit I'd ever seen.
Like, I'm talking anime levels of crying, down to the tears forming two waterspouts that curved away from her head and formed honest-to-God rivers on the floor.
… And that was a paper boat sailing past…
"I-I'm sorry!" she bawled, rubbing uselessly under her eyes as the tears continued to cascade. "I-I'm just so desperate at this point, I-I need a good work review or I'll… I'll… WAAAAAAHHHHHH!"
"I-It's okay, it's okay, uhh… please don't cry?" I asked somewhat nervously, especially when I saw some of the other attendants peeking around the corner, though the fact they left just as quickly as they had arrived gave me some idea that this wasn't exactly out of the ordinary. "What do you mean you need a… a good work review, is that it?"
That seemed to be enough to draw the girl out of her crying fit, as she slowly but surely stopped crying, though she kept sniffling until she took a handkerchief from inside her blazer and blew her nose onto it, the piece of cloth disappearing in a flash of light as she tossed it aside. After a moment longer for her to compose herself, the attendant then cleared some of the space on her desk and placed a few new sheets atop it, before motioning to the piles of paper behind her desk, still somehow miraculously unaffected by all the crying that had gone down. "W-Well… if I'm being honest, I… don't have the best track record when it comes to others' experiences…" she began, tone slightly wavery as she began writing once more onto the papers. "They either refuse, or just… quit halfway through. It hasn't reflected well in my ability to properly grant experiences, so… I-I got a bit desperate to find someone…"
"… Hence the truck?" I asked pensively. My question was met with a nervous, shy nod, but at least she didn't start crying again. "I… see… Well, umm, if nothing else, I'm… willing to give it a try? I mean, I'll do my best, just… gimme an idea of what I should do?"
"Well… normally, I'd give you a catalogue detailing all the different destinations you could go, but after my… w-well, failures, I've… had my list of available destinations somewhat… curated." With that said, the attendant took a small clipped-up pile and slid it over to me, resting it between us. "These are what I can offer."
With a nod of thanks, I took the sheet and began reading through it, letting my eyes wander as I took in the options. I couldn't help the wince that hit me, however, once I took in the options right at the start.
Seriously, whoever chose to go visit Made in Abyss or Warhammer 40k were fucking lunatics…
Still, as I leafed over other options, I started seeing some more "normal" visit options. Funnily enough, they were also all anime-themed, though there were a few movie and book options here and there, even some tabletop games. But still, nothing really drew me in, and I couldn't help but wince when I noticed how nervous the attendant had been getting once I started going through a few too many pages in my search…
That is, until I spotted a name right at the top of the list. A name I knew very well, loved immensely, and had more than once read stories about people visiting.
One Piece
"… I have my choice," I said as calmly as I could as I took a pen and both marked down the name with a check and underlined it, before quickly returning the paper to the young woman. Immediately, her demeanor shifted, the attendant cheerfully taking hold of the paper with an excited smile as she took note of my chosen destination.
"An excellent choice, customer!" she said happily, quickly filling the paper away before taking up another stack of papers and handing it over to me. "Now, for obvious reasons, you'll be leaving your normal corporeal form behind, but we will happily provide you with a new body to partake in your experience! Bear in mind, of course, that your chosen body must obey the nature of the world of destination, so here are some options for you to choose from…"
With that said, she once more gave me a bundle of sheets, though these differed in that rather than listing locations, it listed out all the different options for race, build, age, abilities… And man, were those a lot of options: my background, abilities I'd take, if I retained any knowledge of the verse that I could have… props to these guys, they covered every angle. Granted, they still had a system to keep me from just getting EVERYTHING EVER, simply by assigning a "point" cost to everything. Ingenious.
With that in mind, I decided to first look at the list of objects and other things I'd have on my trip. Truth be told, I didn't really have much I wanted to bring, though I did see some options that interested me: a set of armored clothes, a pack of supplies, some money… all basic stuff, that I still knew I'd need for travelling, regardless of if I had a ship or not.
From there, I skipped over the part noting desired abilities and skills, and went straight to choosing my new race… and wasn't that a loaded gun to stare down.
Sure, picking something like a giant, mink or a fishman would have been awesome, but I also knew exactly how badly it could go, what with the racism and interest in being enslaved, though the possible benefits were just as attractive. And sure, the option of being a human was right there… but where was the fun in that? No, if I was gonna have some kind of extra-dimensional vacation spot, then by thunder, I'd go with something different, dammit!
With that in mind, I set down the paper and took a blank sheet from the pile, slowly noting down pros and cons of each race… when something caught my attention: another sheet, lying on the floor and half-soaked with tears, but still with enough legible text that I could see some of the stuff written in it.
It showed the picture of a humanoid, with brown skin, white hair and large black wings, with a large fire burning on their back, and a big name stenciled in fancy handwriting at the top:
PEOPLE FROM THE LAND OF HEAVEN - LUNARIANS
What I saw was… wild.
A fire that granted near-perfect physical resilience, could be freely manipulated, flight with natural wings and massive adaptability to any environment thanks to said resilience? Shit, that sounded amazing! I hadn't really seen anything like them in One Piece (though for some reason my memory kept nagging me over having forgotten someone related to them), and with abilities like that, hell I was gonna have a blast!
I wasn't that euphoric that I missed out on the fine print of disadvantages, however: apparently, Lunarians were something of a mystery to the world, to the point information on even rumors of them being worth one hundred million Beris, something that was enough to sober me up a bit. There were also mentions of them being apparently extinct, having once lived atop the Red Line before disappearing, with current information pointing to them being extinct…
But hey, if I knew Eichiro Oda well enough, that just meant there was probably a small colony of them somewhere out there, just waiting to be discovered by Luffy or some other poor schmuck.
… Also, I was really biased. Fuck yeah I wanted to be a flying, fire-slinging angel of destruction! I was gonna put so many people to shame!
With that, I signed off the final sheets with my desired name, plus all the wavers for whatever happened to me in the One Piece world.
Again, they had been very thorough with those. I'm eighty percent sure there wasn't a possibility of "maiming by arrival of an errant Elder God banished by an erstwhile group of heroes" in One Piece of all places, but if they wanted it signed, then I'd sign it. It took quite a while for me to get through all the pages, and by the end of it all my wrist was all but begging for the sweet release of death… but thank fuck, I was finished.
It was with no amount of satisfaction that I delivered the last few sheets to the attendant, who borderline beamed at me as she took the sheets and, with a flourish of her pen, signed them off herself before throwing the stack into the air. Almost immediately, a passing disk of metal snatched up the stack with a beam of blue light and flew away to parts unknown, leaving the girl free to rise from her seat and, after some difficulty with stepping around the paperwork surrounding her desk to hop over it, motioned for me to follow her deeper. "Alright, let's get you all set for your vacation, sir!"
And with that, we were off. Thankfully, we didn't need to walk very far, though the amount of doors was borderline dizzying to the mind. More than once I got to peek through a door, and what I saw inside was almost mundane, if it weren't for how fantastical everything else was: just a big room, with at least a dozen people waiting inside alongside attendants and guards, and several big Stargate-like portals surrounding them all on the walls, their insides swirling with a kaleidoscope of colors as people walked into them with varying degrees of hesitation before they disappeared into the light.
… Probably should stop thinking about those before my anxiety went wild.
"And here we are!"
Thankfully, the attendant's words cut through my building renewed panic easily enough, and made realize that we, indeed, had arrived. The room was just as non-descript as the others, bar the little plaque with an impossibly long number at the top, while the inside was occupied only by guards, and another attendant trying (and failing) to wake up a young boy curled up and sleeping like the dead on the floor, though she did give us an exasperated side-glance before she refocused her attention on her task.
And so it was that I found myself standing in front of a swirling, rainbow-colored void, looking at a trans-dimensional attendant about to send me off for a prolonged "vacation" inside a world I only knew as a serialized manga, in a borrowed body, for as long as I lasted or wanted to stay there.
… It was… quite a wild turn compared to what I had set out for today.
"… So… I guess this is it?" I asked uncertainly, scratching the back of my head as I shifted my gaze between the young girl standing in front of me, and the portal right beside me. "I guess… thanks?"
"Oh, it's no problem at all, sir!" she replied cheerfully, hands clasped behind her as she bobbed back and forth atop her heels. "I should be thanking you for giving me a chance to prove my work competence! I hope you have a fun and engaging experience, sir!"
In the face of her enthusiasm… I couldn't help but smile. It was such a genuine, honest happiness, the kind I had rarely seen these days in someone interacting with me. It felt… refreshing, in a way. And sure, it might have been because of her job, but still… I knew what an honest smile could do when you were attending to a customer, so to see it done to me rather than by me, it filled with me with eagerness to go in this adventure.
And so, taking one last deep breath to steel my nerves, I turned towards the portal once more, closed my eyes… and walked through it.
My consciousness vanished a moment later.
-O-
It was with a satisfied smile that the attendant (who had at no moment mentioned her name, aka Illustria, to her customer) paced out of the room, happily humming a tune to herself as she returned to her previous duties, aka paperwork sorting.
What she had also failed to realize, however, is that she had forgotten to speak of one of the company's chief policies regarding transdimensional relocations.
As an institution that prides itself in allowing for fair, balanced experiences, Celestial Enterprise had decided on a simple policy to guarantee fairness to all participants:
The more starting advantages you piled, the bigger your starting disadvantage.
As such, the moment the young man stepped through the portal, a disadvantage suitable for someone that were to become a Lunarian was prepared…
-O-
It was a… funny experience to go through the portal. One moment I had stepped into it, the other I was opening my eyes to yet another unfamiliar space, as if I had just walked through a doorway from one room to another.
Which, it slowly dawned on me, was a very appropriate comparison, seeing as I indeed had found myself inside a different room from the one I was previously in.
For a moment, all I did was simply… stand there, not really looking at anything in particular as I took in the sheer magnitude and realization of what exactly had just happened. It's not every day you're transported to another world just like that, like if it was supposed to be a routine thing that didn't shatter humanity's understanding of the universe like it was a plate smashed by a giant mallet.
By all accounts, I should have been flipping the fuck out.
…
And yet… I wasn't. Not for any kind of mental fortitude, granted, but more because as far as I could tell, my mind and body kept registering me as belonging to this place, even with all the memories of me never existing before in this world still swirling in my head, including that One Piece wasn't real—
… One Piece… One Piece was now real…
I was in the world of One Piece.
"… Oh fuck this is gonna be a wild ride…"
I just wish my first words after my arrival had been a bit more… grandiose than that. Then again, beggars can't be choosers.
Plus, I always did terrible in essay classes back in high school.
Also why did my voice sound so… weird?
With the brief clash of existential pondering over, I finally took a few deep breaths and took stock of the room I was in. Both surprisingly and not, it was a bog-standard bedroom, no special features to it whatsoever. Even the furniture was somewhat simplistic, consisting of a bed, closet, table, chair and a mirror. The last one was the one thing that truly interested me, however, and no sooner had I spotted the thing did I rush to stand in front of it, taking in for the first time my brand-new appearance. And right out of the gate, the changes had been as clear as crystal.
The most obvious one? I was young.
Gone was my twenty-four-year-old body, with brown hair, brown eyes and a latino complexion. Instead, the figure staring at me in the mirror couldn't be older than six, a tiny little tyke with dark skin, short white hair and crystal-blue eyes. Shockingly enough, my body already had a surprising amount of muscle definition for a six-year-old, mostly hidden under the baggy shirt and pants I was wearing, but that was honestly small potatoes compared to the two most striking features of my new body: the two large (relative to my body) black wings that absent-mindedly flapped on my back, and the small plume of fire burning brightly on my back, framing my head with a halo of orange light that trembled just slightly.
It was… quite a sight, I'll admit.
"… Wait, why am I a kid?!"
If only the gravitas could have survived the ruin of moods that was… well, me.
That my voice sounded downright adorable did not help matters.
"What the hell, I didn't ask for this," I muttered in annoyance as I looked over my body one last time. Everything seemed properly attached, nothing was hurt or colored weirdly, I had full range of motion… Guess it was as good as I'd get. "Alright, enough stalling… let's get this started."
I didn't bother trying to loot the place or anything, because I didn't really have anything to carry said loot with me. Plus, if it turned out this house (assuming it was a house or something like that) was occupied, they'd probably have questions for whoever stole it, and that would get the Marines on my ass. Better save that stuff until I am not a tiny little baby who can't fight worth shit. So with that in mind, I instead left the room and began walking through the house, mindful of encountering anyone that could still be inside. Thankfully, no such surprises presented themselves to me, leaving me free to just pace until I found a hallway leading to a door with two windows next to it.
"If that's not an exit, I'll eat my wings… Well, here goes…"
A few steps closer, and a few seconds to steel my resolve as I stared down the big piece of wood, I gripped the handle, twisted it, and pushed the door open. Immediately, I was blinded by the bright light of the sun shining down from above, forcing me to shield my eyes with my arm to try and ease myself into the outside world. Thankfully, and most likely because of my new biology, acclimating to the brightness took no time and all, finally letting me catch sight of the place I'd start my adventure in-!
…
… Oh… Oh God…
Run, had to run, HAD TO GET AWAY-!
I had barely started running, hyper ventilating and sweating like a goddamn fountain at the sight of the hellhole I had found myself in, when I heard voices behind me. Rough, angry, evil-sounding voices.
"Oi, there's an interesting one! Get them!"
They only made me run faster.
Yet no matter how much I ran, I could still hear the stomping of feet behind me, shouts and hollers echoing like the cries of a pack of animals as the men continued to chase me. More than once, I tried flapping my wings to take off, put an extra measure of distance between me and my pursuers, but no matter how hard I tried, how much I willed my body to lift off, all I could manage was to kick up dust around me.
And then a gunshot rang out.
The bullet hit me directly in my shin, the impact making me miss a step and tumble forward with only barely enough moment to turn it into a half-assed roll… and yet there was no injury. No blood, no bullet hole, not even a bruise to mark where I had been hit. Furthermore, I didn't even feel pain… or anything at all. Had I not fallen forward, I probably would have thought the bullet had missed me outright.
It made ignoring the subsequent shots fired at me far easier… but didn't help my panic at hearing them any lower.
Have you ever gotten shot at? I hadn't until that point, and it showed: every time I heard the sound of a gun going off: I kept flinching, ducking my head to dodge bullets that I didn't need to dodge, my limbs tucked as closely as I could to my body as I kept running for my life.
"Dammit, someone STOP THAT KID ALREADY!" an even rougher voice shouted from behind me, one that made my skin crawl with the sheer venom in its tone…
FWIP!
"Argh!"
Followed by my feet being swept from underneath me by a heavy pair of bolas that tangled up my ankles together, dropping me like a sack of potatoes onto the resin-covered ground. Again, I suffered no pain or injury from it.
But it made my panic skyrocket.
Especially when I caught sight of my pursuers approaching, and got my first look at them.
They all looked like hardened criminals, ugly as hell and with a plethora of scars that only made the grins they were sporting that much more unnerving. Dirty, rough-looking clothes that made clear they cared not for appearance, with pouches, swords and pistols hanging from belts, sheathes and holsters haphazardly strapped to their bodies in easy-to-reach places, coupled with plenty of tools that seemed perfect to restrain someone in any number of fashions.
Even in my panic-addled state, I knew exactly what they were. And that meant I had to get away from them.
Far, far, FAR away.
"There we go, finally!" shouted one of them, the man reducing his maddened dash into a stop as he leered down at my struggling form. "Damn brat sure can run, I'll give him that!"
"Just means… we can sell him… for more!" said another one of the men, this one a much fatter one that was gasping for breath just as much as I had been. "… Shit… damn brat, making me… run like this…"
"Told ya you were out of shape, pal!"
"Ah… go to hell… you bastard…"
Their byplay, however, flew completely over my head. I didn't care to hear or pay attention to what they were saying, nor did I think of any witty replies or scathing insults to throw back… because I was too busy furiously trying to tug the bolas off my ankles.
And yet they wouldn't come off, no matter how hard I tugged or pulled they wouldn't come off please come off pleasepleasePLEASE—
"Hey, you little shit!"
WHACK!
My efforts were cut off just as swiftly, however, when one of the men took hold of a big bat and whacked it furiously against my head. Just as before, no pain came from it, but it did throw me off enough that I lost my grip on the ropes and fell prone to the ground again.
"You cut that out right now, ya hear?!" snarled the man, already stalking forward towards me, his bat once more raised and poised to strike.
Out of sheer desperation, I dragged myself back with one hand while sweeping at them with the other one…
"B-Back off!"
FWOOSH!
And to my surprise, the fire on my back drained away from behind me and flowed down onto my arm just as it moved, causing a wall of flame to shoot out towards the man, who seemed just as surprised as I was with the move…
"A-AAAAAAAHHHH!"
Only to get downright immolated by the flames, the man's body coming alight almost instantly and leaving a burning figure that, after a moment of staying still, began shrieking like a demon and rolling on the ground in an attempt, futile as it seemed, to put out the red flames trying and succeeding in slowly reducing him to so many ashes.
It was all over in moments.
And I… I had just killed someone… I-I hadn't meant to, I just wanted to scare him—
BANG!
"AAAAARGH!"
Another gun fired, but this time the bullet did pierce through my body, punching a hole onto my outstretched arm and spurting crimson blood onto the air and ground.
The shock of me actually being hurt was smothered by the sheer pain the wound caused me, forcing me to both scream and curl up into a tiny ball, blood slathering onto my clothes, and it hurt, it hurt make it stop make it STOP-!
Then the fire in my back came to life again, and the pain vanished.
The shock, however, didn't. And that left me open.
"Alright, boy, enough of that~"
Open enough that, before I could even turn my head, a woman had straddled up to me and got on all fours atop of me, her red hair draping over my head as she slowly lowered herself until her face was right next to mine, whispering directly into my ear.
"Can't have you charring any more of my goons, see. So just go ahead and… sleep~"
And before I could do anything against it, all my energy and stamina started to just drain away from my body.
The last thing I saw before unconsciousness claimed me, was the collar the woman was raising to snap around my neck, and the giant bubbles slowly rising from the ground and up to the crown of the gigantic mangroves that dotted Sabaody Archipelago.
~O~
Oh hey, where did this come from?
Decided to redo my One Piece SI into something new, both by starting at the proper beginning of the fic rather than timeskipping straight forward and then doubling back EONS later like I planned to do at first, AND by implementing a LOT of changes to the planned plot and characters.
Chief of which, as you can see, is changing what the SI is.
Ever since King was introduced, I was fascinated by the concept of Lunarians. And it made me wonder how one would be able to live in the open world when they didn't have the backing of an Emperor…
And also weren't stupid enough to, you know, not try and disguise some of their more striking features… like, you know, the fire on your back.
Bear in mind, I'll be speculating a LOT about how Lunarian traits work, but honestly, I'm gonna have fun with them.
Now, this re-write has been delayed MASSIVELY, meaning a TON of plans actually got preempted by Oda, because I've yet to remove the damn probe he shoved into my brain.
A few examples include:
- A plant-based fruit
- A character whose personality was a dead-ringer for Yamato
- An ancient mecha from the Void Century
- A modified human with roots to Vegapunk in some way
… Yeah, as you can see, Oda beat me to enough punches I'm gonna start calling him Ippo now.
Plus, plenty, and I mean PLENTY of changes to canon, cause this crazy train has no brakes, buckos!
But yeah, I wrapped this up, now it is here. Lemme know what you think of it!
Until next time, folks, peace.