Side A, Part 1

Chapter 1 - I don't know what I know, But I know where it's at (Just because I lost it doesn't mean I want it back)

Song - Creep In A T-Shirt by Portugal. The Man

Once, I was a writer.

Less so now, for lack of a computer - I'd managed to scrounge up a typewriter that synergized with my powers decently well, but it just wasn't the same - and… well, because it'd be weird to write fanfic while in a universe I'd assumed fictional up until I was dumped in it six months ago.

So, now I was just Laine. Another body - dressed as anonymously as possible in a long black and gray shawls and wide-brimmed fedora, with a tendency towards cloth face masks and scarfs, my old habit of dying my hair shoved to the side and forgotten - taking up space in the poor part of Loguetown, the melting pot where people either went to in order to kick off their story… or where they came to end it. An island of ambitions and dreams, completely fitting for the place where Gol D. Roger had been born… and in turn, gave birth to the New Age of Pirates moments before dying.

I'd gone to see the execution stand a few times since I'd arrived here, trying to… picture the man who'd reshaped the world with nothing but a handful of words.

Today was my fifth try and yet…

Yet somehow, despite knowing what Roger looked like - roughly, thanks to the manga and anime - the picture failed to congeal as anything clearer than black and white ink strokes over muddied animation cells seen ages ago, which simply didn't fit with the very real world of precisely assembled flagstone roads, Renaissance-style architecture, and teeming masses of people made of flesh, blood, and bone… even if some of them were built very differently to what I was used to at home.

Of course, I wasn't just here to sightsee, because for all my talent as a writer was useless here, my talent as an artist…

"You need a pedlar's certificate to hawk your goods in the main square," a police officer informed me, tugging down on the lip of his cap to avoid my stare. It wasn't working very well, given that I was sitting cross legged on the ground with my art spread out in front of me - the tame stuff, anyway. People would have to ask and ask nicely to get pin-ups or anything saucier.

"Why? Last time I tried to sell, I was told just to wait for the weekend, not that I needed a license to go with it," I said before my tone dried up, anger overriding anxiety. "By one of your fellow officers, even."

Okay, being an artist wasn't doing me much better anyway - at least not in terms of 'honest work' in the intended style. And if there was anything I knew as an American, it was that financial security was life security.

And right now? I was not very secure.

The guy's expression twitched uncomfortably. "It's the only way to be sure of the quality of goods-"

"It's art," I said flatly, internally being torn between stressed out laughter at the absurdity and anger at the entire situation. Thankfully, the ratio was tilted in a way where I could actually still talk. "'Quality' is a subjective matter, halfway between the artist's skill and the buyer's tastes. Unless you think I'm sitting here trying to sell pre-used paper."

The addition of 'dumbfuck' went unspoken, but one of the fruit salesmen nearby snorted anyway.

The cop flushed. "It could be…er, counterfeit- or-or copied-"

"Someone put a copyright out on birds? On pigeons?" I made an effort to say the word in the most haughty way I could, turning 'pigeons' into a sneering pseudo-French monstrosity with two more syllables than it actually needed, as compensation for not being able to cuss at a cop.

The cop tried to return to the script. "You can resume trading if you purchase a certificate-"

"Which takes money. Which I don't have, ergo why I was selling the art," I snapped as I gathered up my stuff anyway. Fucking bureacracy and its circular logic hellscape. "But I get the point. I'll get my shit and get out."

I did not need to get arrested for mouthing off. I did not need to find out how far police brutality went in this world, not when my only real metersticks were the Marines (infamous for a tendency to become the primary bullies of their local jurisdictions), Impel Down (a torture facility), and the fact that the only ex-cop I knew about in setting was one of Blackbeard's sadists - and Laffitte had absolutely rancid vibes even by that measure.

Compared to that, Genzo being a good man and a handful of Marines half-assing their way in the vague direction of the same wasn't enough argument to make me believe in the trustworthiness of lawmen in this setting.

So, that left swallowing my anger at the blatant unfairness of it all and taking the L in the name of staying safe.

I gathered my stuff quietly, biting my tongue until the cop was gone - and biting it again when I heard heavy combat boots walk by and pause in front of me, the stench of cigar smoke heavy on the air in a way that took me back to an old, small town diner in the years before no-smoking was the rule rather than a concession.

Captain Smoker then.

He was known around town, vaguely, but he rarely interacted with it outside of the context of 'patrols'. Which was fine - it beat corruption, even if people were still scared of the guy for… well, both being a Marine and having a Devil Fruit on top of a raging case of resting bitch face.

Me? My problem was mostly that I did not want to deal with him. Even if I knew he was fundamentally not a bad guy, he was still a Marine and my anxiety wasn't wired to deal with his flavor of hardass.

I adjusted my glasses and my wide-brimmed hat, making a show of reorganizing my art again, making sure that everything was placed together with a minimal amount of opportunity to get damaged while I waited for the Marine to leave. I could… maybe sell my stuff somewhere else. Find a back alley the cops didn't care about or… wander in a way that kept me hard to pin down for authority while still putting me in contact with potential customers.

Or I'd take my Devil Fruit and use that more directly. Either take to crime or house painting - either would work, I guessed, though I didn't imagine I'd be great at either off the bat. At the very least, my Devil Fruit and its infinite capacity for producing inks and paints reduced a lot of my expenses in that department…

"Uh."

I looked up to see the fruit seller who'd been standing alongside me the whole time.

"You have anything besides birds?" he asked.

A genuine smile crossed my face as some small bit of uncertainty stopped squeezing my heart. "I sure do."

A colored pencil sketch of a bowl of fruit and a tasteful nude featuring a curvaceous woman reading in front of an orange tree later, I had 7,500 beri in my bag. It wasn't a great amount of money, but it wasn't a bad profit for a day that I'd almost assumed to have been a crapshoot.

Ipponmatsu rolled his eyes as I told him about my victory. "So I suppose now you have the means to actually pay for those lessons in sword care now?"

My smile fell a bit. I'd gotten by so far in the months I'd been in this world, mostly on the generosity of children and the trade of small favors for small things, but that wasn't money - it was effort for effort, untaxable and untraceable and untenable with people you had no rapport with.

And that rule applied to everyone. And Ipponmatsu couldn't pay his bills with me offering to paint his store's walls again.

"Yeah," I said, handing over the money. "This covers the past-"

"Your next lesson," the shopkeep said, cutting me off as he quickly counted the bills and stuffed them into his register. "Maybe the one after that as well - we'll see."

That got a light snort out of me. Hardass facade, nice guy underneath… well, unless you were a Marine. In which case, the underneath was simply 'bitch', which worked out fine for me, because I wasn't much of one for blatant fascism either and also found 'bitch' highly entertaining.

"Well, I can't complain about that," I said, sitting down and bringing Murasame around to my front, along with the cleaning kit out of my bag. "And hopefully, I'll be able to pay for the lessons after that as well."

"Ha. So uncertain," Ipponmatsu scoffed as he brought out his own blade - Yubashiri, as always, because he wasn't going to hold back on matching Meito to Meito the best he could. "This is why my family stuck with weapons! Self-defense is a need, not a luxury!... or at least it was before that damned Captain Smoker came to town. Chasing away my customer base…"

Most of Ipponmatsu's customer base had been pirates, but not all of them… though, with the Marines constantly sniffing around for any activity that looked mildly piratical, civilians had ended up shying away as well. And since Marines were almost universally armed out of their organization's own pocket and production lines, that had meant no new demographic coming in to fill the hole in Ipponmatsu's bottom line, save for the few rare pirates and whatever local gang members were willing to risk the main street in exchange for quality steel.

But the dry spell would end, eventually. All it would take was a hurricane by the name of Monkey D. Luffy blowing through town and setting Smoker onto a chase he'd never quite manage to end.

"Well, you're still doing better than I am," I said after Ipponmatsu had gotten enough grousing out. "I might have done well today, but it's not a guarantee of success… but if the buyer likes it enough to spread the word, I might start to build a reputation…"

The weapon salesman scoffed. "Is that how it works for artists where you're from? Just do the work and hope that people tell their friends about you?"

Effectively? "Yeah. It's kind of a crapshoot - but if you're lucky and you get seen by the right people at the right time…," I said, trailing off for a moment before putting a smile on. "Anyway, it can take years of building a base before a big, proper break happens, but it's definitely one of those things where if you keep putting yourself out there, the odds of getting that break only go up. After that, it's mostly just… not letting it pass you by. Otherwise you're stick as a novelty - cheap and not worth much, right up until you fail to perform at all… and then it's nothing but complaints."

Like how I ended up. I'd had the chance for breaks early on, gotten positive attention… and shied away from it, too afraid of failing and uncertain in my abilities. And by the time I'd become confident enough in my skills and the nature of internet commerce… well. The economy got worse, the internet generally more hostile, and thus nobody was interested that much anymore, even as I put more and more work into getting stuff out and being seen.

By then, most of the interaction was 'okay, when's the next thing' and 'you're late' rather than anything enthusiastic.

It wasn't about the money or the fame and there was rarely any 'power' in those sorts of things. But bills still had to be paid and there was… something about someone looking at your work and saying 'yes, you are good enough to spend money on' that really just hit somewhere warm.

And me? I'd spent just about all of my time in the cold.

"And you bought this sword with the profits of a 'break'?" Ipponmatsu asked. "Must have been…"

"No." There'd never been a break. A crack, maybe, and one that had been sealed up quickly, but never a break. "That money was from cleaning out gutters and picking rocks and other shit out of fields."

I tilted Murasame to the side, admiring the play of color across the black blade's surface as I wiped the old oil from the blade. Even if the sword hadn't been this pretty at the time, it'd still been worth every bead of sweat - even if those same experiences had just been one more sequence in a particularly miserable part of my life.

"Which was an adventure in and of itself, I guess," I said, fully aware of how unconvincing I sounded. "The last skinflint bastard I worked for tried to argue that, because I didn't pick up the pine needles or the pebbles smaller than my thumb in his yard, I somehow didn't deserve the 500 beri we'd agreed to - or that because I didn't specifically link the question of 'do you have any paying work' and the immediate follow-up of 'what job do you have for me' explicitly, that somehow meant that I didn't actually negotiate for a paying job - but I got him to cough it up in the end."

Ipponmatsu gave me a look of incredulous disgust. "...that much for 500 beri?"

Yeah, it'd sounded just as insane when I was spending a literal half-hour arguing over a 5 dollar paycheck. "...yeah, well, the bastard was like that with everything," I said, trying not to focus too much on the past. "Just assumed that because he was blood that he was entitled to your time and labor for free and to the contents of your wallet just cause."

If I'd really sat down to calculate how much money my father had stolen from me, explicitly and not, the number would have probably been well past 20k - and that was before calculating in labor costs or doing American Dollar to Beri conversions. I'd never gotten quite the hang of Dollars to Yen, but '1 to 100' had always been 'close enough' for the sake of conversation.

Ipponmatsu looked away. "I can see why you left."

"Yeah." It's not like I didn't have any regrets about other people, but… yeah, I wasn't that torn up over leaving certain things behind. All the damage was old news. "Uchiko ball this time?"

"Mmm… no. Do your empty wallet a favor and use that perhaps… once a year. Any other piece of steel you get will thank you - I've seen far too many idiots wreck a perfectly good sword by doing that weekly."

"Alright. So, then the next step is oiling..."

We went through the rest of the steps without difficulty; blade maintenance wasn't that complex a process, but there was something to be said for building and maintaining good habits, especially when it came to getting a 'feel' for exactly how much oil you wanted to leave on the blade. Even fixing the wrapping wasn't that hard - though I'd opted for a pretty simple style early on that Ipponmatsu still apparently found mildly irritating compared to the more involved styles he liked to put on Yubashiri.

'How you tie your sword represents how the blade is bound to your soul,' was something I could understand, because it was the whole reason I'd wanted to learn how to care for Murasame in the first place. But on the other hand, I didn't want that relationship to be dominated by my ability to fixate on the minutiae of things - Murasame was my soul. I knew that. I didn't need to obsess over announcing that fact to everyone else.

As the lesson began to wrap up, the bell at the door rang. And knowing what I did about the people most likely to enter Ipponmatsu's shop…

"Tashigi," I said as I sheathed Murasame and stood up, turning to look at the Marine.

"Miss Laine," Tashigi replied curtly.

Unlike Ipponmatsu, who was old enough to make figuring anything by his apparent age difficult, Tashigi was fairly young - I think about twenty-one around the time she first appeared in canon - and I was pretty sure that she wasn't that far off of that age now, though I wasn't exactly on 'when's your birthday' terms with her.

Her eyes went down to my sword. "I see that you brought Shusui."

"Murasame, not Shusui," I corrected. Barring some other isekai'd idiot deciding to take a swing at the big leagues by going after Gecko Moriah's resources, that particular blade was still floating around the Florian Triangle. "And I don't go anywhere without it."

At least not after the first time someone tried to steal it. I'd gotten it back very quickly - apparently cursed blades can have very strong opinions about being stolen from their chosen owner - but there was a saying about an ounce of prevention for a reason.

"So you say." Liar, she didn't add.

"So I know." Bitch, I didn't say back.

Needless to say, we weren't friends.

It was a little funny, two generally genial and polite people experiencing this kind of mutual hate at first sight, but it made sense; she was a willing World Government stooge with a clumsy bent a mile-wide and a fixation on preserving a narrowly-defined 'dignity' belonging to all named blades while also being more than happy to believe every word of propaganda thrown her way, while I was a spiteful antifascist 'accountability for all'-type with a deep knowledge of how deep the rot of the World Government really ran, a hair trigger hatred of incompetence (and Tashigi's continued pattern of clumsiness definitely read as such to me), and what looked a hell of a lot like one of the most famous - and famously stolen - swords in the world glued to my side.

Literally, the only way we wouldn't have hated each other was if we'd never even heard of each other existing. As it were…

"If you're going to fight, take it outside," Ipponmatsu said, annoyed but long resigned to the bullshit circus that was the inevitable result of me and Tashigi being in the same room at the same time. He didn't like her all that much more than I did, but not wanting his shop wrecked by two feuding idiots or to experience the follow up of 'why was a Marine attacked on the premises' were both reasonable desires.

"Nah, I'm going to head home. Thank you for your time today, Ipponmatsu," I said, bowing to the man. "I do appreciate your tutelage in these things."

Ipponmatsu waved me off as I left the shop, leaving Tashigi to… whatever the fuck she was doing. It was none of my concern.

And as soon as she left with Smoker to chase the Straw Hats, she wouldn't be any of my concern either.

'But Laine,' some of you might ask. 'If you've got a cool sword and a Devil Fruit, why aren't you doing things with them? Why are you just hanging around being a civilian instead of going out to be a pirate on an adventure or joining the Marines-' which, by the way, ew, disgusting, absolutely fucking not joining Team Fashy, even if I didn't have the pre-existing Sitcom Arch-Nemesis thing going on with Tashigi. '-or the Revolutionaries or something?'

Because I'm simply not built for it, physically or skill wise.

I was also pretty sure that gravity was somehow stronger on this world… which would match up with some theories I'd seen about the size of One Piece's planet. It was nothing that would kill me immediately, but… the air itself was heavy, when I'd first arrived.

Now, almost a year out? It was less so - my body still protested some of its treatment, but it was much more livable than it'd been during those first weeks - and more liveable than it'd been back on Earth as well.

Shonen physics were generous to the human body, after all.

But that still wasn't enough to make me into 'protagonist' material. Being physically disabled - invisible disability or not - tended to slow people down even in mundane professions. Active combat was out of the question.

And I didn't have the temperament for it anyway. A lack of ambition and personal drive on top of a tendency towards depressive spirals didn't make for… much of anything anywhere.

If I had the potential at any point, it was long gone now - life had cracked me open and taken everything worth anything inside of me ages ago, like an egg or a lobster. All I was now was the shell of a person that maybe could have been a contender, a few stubborn scraps of the spirit and vim that'd gotten stuck in the crevices still keeping me moving and snapping with more energy than someone who'd been completely broken would, even as saltwater tears filled up the rest of the space.

But however rough the world was to me on a social and physical level, there was no getting past the fact that the night sky was beautiful.

Loguetown did have a certain amount of light pollution - that was simply what happened when you had enough people living in the same place with electricity -, but… it was nothing like on Earth. You could actually see the stars in a meaningful sense, even on the odd night where there were three whole ass moons in the sky.

But no matter how many moons hung overhead, the night atmosphere always seemed to bring out the life in me.

And tonight, I was putting that energy into music.

I picked the strings of my guitar, wincing as the notes went sour - though at least the 'wrong' was roughly in order, so that was… something to keep in mind as I tried to tune the strings again.

While music was as much a passion for me as art and writing, it wasn't one I was necessarily good at. Still, nothing about that would change if I didn't put in the effort.

After a bit of fiddling, I tried again. Less janky, so…

I started to pick at the tabs of Bink's Sake, glad at least that I'd learned this much from my musician brother ages ago. I wasn't doing great, but I wasn't failing completely, so I was going to keep going-

I finally failed a note badly enough to stop.

…maybe I needed to adjust the strings again. Or trade some more of my record collection to the local pirate radio team for lessons, since I was pretty sure at least one of them was a proper musician who could at least explain where I was fucking up in words I could understand.

"Binkusu no Sake wo, todoke ni yuku yo," I tried again, this time also singing the words I'd memorized by sound and subtitle ages ago. "Umikaze kimakase namimakase, shio no mukou-"

"Laine!" a small voice yelled directly into my ear.

"Jesus-!"

Thankfully, my little jump didn't result in injury or a broken guitar string. After all, there was no real call to be afraid of a little girl who's only 'thing' in life was acting the part of a fairytale princess, after all. What was she going to do, stab me with her little tin tiara? She was way too sweet for that.

"Alexandria, you need to knock!" I scolded.

The little girl in question spun in place, her dress flaring as she made a show of looking around. "Why? You didn't have anyone around."

"But I was doing something - oh, never mind," I said, giving up. It's not like six year olds were renowned for their situational awareness. "What did you need?"

I might be a busted down cynic - not an old one though, even if I felt it more often than not - but I wasn't about to be a shitlord to a kid just because they startled me. And besides, this side of town, if a kid was bothering you at this time of night, it was usually for a good reason.

"Wanted to borrow your spare bunk," Alexandria asked, confirming that suspicion. "Deesire's bein' shouty at the usual place and people are bein' shouty back, so none of the kids are stayin' there tonight."

And 'shouty' from the local mob punks usually meant some kind of big fight was about to go down as well. Just as well that the kids got out of the way.

"Sure. Yuta's out for the night, so there's plenty of room." Probably doing something for Bartolomeo's outfit - that's where a lot of the less than legal leaning street urchins ended up at some point or another, and Yuta was definitely too spicy for law-abiding occupations. "Was there anything else you needed?"

Alexandria kicked off her shoes before squashing the mattress down like a cat making biscuits. "Just had a question."

I put my guitar away. "What kind of question?"

"Why do you keep fighting with the Marine lady?"

"Tashigi?" I clarified, waiting for Alexandria to nod. "Cause I don't like her."

"Why?"

I exhaled. The difficulty of explaining uncomfortable situations to children. "Let's just say that I've got… what you could call a Woody Guthrie approach to government and that leads to… disagreements with agents of said government," I said, trying to get the strings of my guitar tuned right again.

It didn't have 'This Machine Kills Fascists' painted on it yet, but once I got irritated enough with Marine chants and Government propaganda, I'd probably get around to fixing that.

And then probably slam a Marine with it and go to prison.

"I don't know what that means."

"It's alright not to understand - I didn't make it very understandable," I said, tucking Alexandria into bed. "Just leave it at… she's not the kind of person I can be friends with. Ever."

Big shiny grey eyes stared up at me. "Even if she's not bad?"

Oh boy. Now we had to have a deeper conversation about things. "You can not like something or someone without them being evil, little princess. Trying to say everyone you don't like is a bad person is a bad habit to get into. Makes your brain lazy," I said, poking Alexandria between the eyes gently. "That's actually part of why I don't like Tashigi - cause she has a lazy brain and likes it that way."

"And that makes it okay to fight her? I thought fighting was bad."

"It's… bad to fight without a good reason," I allowed. "And there's a difference between fighting with words and fighting with weapons. That's also why I try to leave or ignore her once she shows up in places where I am. Because I'm trying not to fight. But it's hard when she won't leave me alone."

"Then… what's a good reason to fight?" Alexandria asked.

"To defend yourself. To defend others. Your precious people or just… people that need it. To stop someone from doing harm," I said.

"You'd fight to protect your sword."

"Because Murasame is my treasure. But you and the other kids are my treasure too," I said, tucking the little girl in. "And you know that it'd be a very different kind of fight if it came down to protecting you instead of my sword."

Though, if I was perfectly honest, I didn't want to think about a situation where I'd have to choose.

This time, when I went to the central square, it was as a sightseer - no intent to sell, though I'd certainly not turn down any commissions kicked my way, but to just… look at the execution platform again.

'Give me a direction,' I asked the edifice of death, as if Gol D. Roger was there and in any way able to answer. 'Just - give me something to work off of besides 'existing'.'

I could help the kids but that was… incidental. It wasn't a drive for me, it was a purpose that dragged me behind - more service. I needed… I needed something Piratical. Completely selfish and completely free-

And of course, that's when Tashigi had to pull up.

"Laine!" she yelled, drawing every eye in the fucking square to us. "Fight me -"

Okay. Time to actually stop this bullshit circus in its tracks. I turned around as quickly as I could, immediately shoving my nose in her face - easy enough to do, when we were about the same height. "Give me one good reason why."

"'Why'?" Tashigi sputtered. "I - it's- it's a matter of honor! Don't you have a swordsman's pride?"

The laugh that came out of me was ugly. "Honor? Is that what you call forcing a situation where you get what you want no matter what happens?" I asked. "Because I don't. And it's my pride that keeps me from taking bait like that, because I'm secure enough in who I am not to pick stupid fights that I'd lose even if I won!"

The girl stepped back. "What? What are you talking about -"

She couldn't be this stupid. "Do the math, kid. If you win, I lose my sword and maybe my life. If I win, I get arrested for 'attacking' a Marine and, oh let me guess, lose my sword and maybe my life," I pointed out, stepping back and crossing my arms. In the second case, there wasn't even a 'maybe' about it. The World Government had a habit of papering walls with very detailed guides on how easy it was to get fucked by the system - all under the guise of protecting the civilians, of course. "I don't know about you, but I'm not interested in playing games that are rigged from the start. I read the small print and know the rules. I learned that shit years before you were even a twinkle in your daddy's eye."

Tashigi blustered. "I wouldn't-"

"Maybe. Maybe not. But it wouldn't stop your comrades or the law from stepping in to 'defend' you, so that makes what you think you'd do in the dark a moot point. So, if the only way to 'win' is not to play…" I spread my arms out. "Here's me, not playing. Now fuck off and leave me alone; I have better things to do than indulge your childish complexes."

And now that my day was effectively ruined before it was even noon, I'd be heading home early, probably to try painting some of my frustration away. Fucking Tashigi.

I enjoyed the huff of my bad mood as I started to zig through the maze of alleys, guided by the unerring internal 'compass' that told me where my art was. It didn't, however, do a whole lot about obstacles and issues immediately around me.

"You're blunt with her."

I jumped at the surprise voice behind me. "Fucking Christ!"

A guy that was seven feet tall and built like a fridge had no right being able to pull a stealth entrance like that, even without his habit of smoking like a chimney mixed in.

"Most people like Tashigi, for some reason or another," Smoker said, studying me. "So what's your problem with her?"

Fuck it. No more holding my tongue. "...what, is 'I think she's full of shit' too vague?" I asked.

"Between bullshit, horseshit, batshit, dogshit, chickenshit, and all the other options… you're going to have to be a bit more specific on the type."

Hah. I forgot that Smoker was actually pretty fucking funny. Mouthy ass Clint Eastwood-type.

"She's got a case of myopia that goes a bit beyond needing glasses to fix, but instead of learning anything about other people's situations, she spends her much time focusing on how she's been wronged and oppressed by the world instead of even considering the idea that people might have problems with her for reasons other than 'oooh a giiiiiirrrrrl'," I said, throwing up quotation marks with my fingers before pointing at myself. "Seriously, do you see me whining about the gender I was assigned at birth every time I'm mildly inconvenienced- actually, don't answer that. I don't want to know if the local Marine Captain is stalking me."

Smoker snorted. "Only for today, and only because Tashigi won't shut up about you. I'm getting tired of listening to it and I already know her side of it, front to back. So, I decided to look in on the other half of the equation."

"Well you can believe that I'm sick of hearing her go on about it too," I snapped. "I also want her to stop trying to pick fights with me over my sword - you of all people should know what my position is legally if I accept one of those challenges, even without hearing me spell it out for her earlier."

"Yeah, believe me, I know," the Marine said, crossing his arms. "It'll be a pain in the ass, but I'll talk to her about it. Tell her you're off-limits or something. If that doesn't work, I'll set up a proper bout on base - and step in if anyone gives you shit."

I didn't like either of those options too much, seeing as I wasn't much of a swordsman in the first place, but fuck it, this much help was way better than nothing. "Thanks. I figure this wasn't something you wanted to be wasting time on today."

"Eh. You were just on the way of my regular patrol - wouldn't have looked at you twice if not for that sword or the art stuff earlier. Still had to work a little to put it all together - that rant at Tashigi locked it though."

My ears heated up. Fuck, I thought I'd been mostly beneath notice.

"Not a lot of people are willing to curse out a Marine and call them out on their shit," Smoker clarified, as if reading my mind. "It especially stands out when the rest of your thing is hiding under a cloak on the sunniest island in East Blue."

I pulled my shawl closer around me, aware of how it was effectively a cape - if capes were particularly impressive when made out of muddy grey crochet. I wore it mostly because it helped cover Murasame from prying eyes - not that it helped if Tashigi was anywhere around. "I… prefer not being directly observed."

"Yeah, I figured. Devil Fruit user in East Blue tends to draw eyes."

Of course, that would have come up.

"It's not illegal to have an ability," I said. Probably because being a 'freak' usually pushed people to the outskirts of society and thus forced them into extremes without specific mandates.

"I know that. But users don't tend to stay civilians - especially not when they end up with powers like yours," Smoker pointed out. "But you… despite having the ability to make monsters from nothing, you just make fairy tales come to life to entertain kids. You know that's weird, right? Even without that super special sword that Tashigi won't shut the fuck up about… but then again, someone who has a sword like that and never uses it is weird, too."

My grip tightened around Murasame. "...look, Captain. I don't know exactly what you're getting at with this conversation, but if I had any chance at being special, I missed that chance years ago, and it's not coming back," I said, looking him straight in the eye for the first time in the conversation. "Pro tip: people like me? The washouts of life? We're not worth this much effort. All we do is disappoint and we'll just keep doing it until we finally die, hopefully with as little collateral damage as possible. So whatever you're trying to get me to sign up for, the answer's 'no'. I just want to live as peacefully as I can with what little I have for however long I have left, okay?"

Smoker's expression shifted in a way that I couldn't quite read. "...you expecting to die?"

"Everyone does eventually." Especially with pre-existing health conditions. "Honestly, the fact that I've made it to thirty amazes me some days. If I'm lucky, I'll either go out in my sleep or doing something right for once in my life - and hopefully the last one won't be for nothing," I said, before giving him a look. "And dying because your favorite… what, intern?"

"Petty Officer," Smoker corrected.

I was pretty sure that was above mook level and probably would explain why she was allowed to wear non-uniform clothes while on duty. "...well, she is petty," I allowed. "Either way, dying because she's too prideful to admit that she's wrong about something would definitely not count as something worthwhile. How old is she anyway?"

"Nineteen."

And there it was - that last puzzle piece that made everything click.

"And there you have it; it's because nineteen is literally the worst age. Anyone who has to deal with a nineteen year old's shit deserves monetary compensation," I said, knowing damn well that the same rule had once applied to me; after all, it'd been a nineteen-year old me who'd thought Mercy D. Witt was a great idea top to bottom and not a blatant sign that I needed some kind of help. "I mean, not from me, of course - you're the one with a stable job here."

"Yeah, I wasn't asking for it," the Marine Captain said as he stood up straight again, showing plainly how fucking far being seven feet really went. It wasn't anything I didn't know from back home - I had a cousin who was the same height - but it was a reminder that I was very much five foot five and a half. "But, hey. So long as you're this reasonable, I don't have any reason not to be reasonable back at you. I'll keep Tashigi off your ass and you keep not fucking up my town, alright? Shouldn't be too hard."

With that, he disappeared into a literal smokeout, apparently willing to show off exactly what a Logia could do with an audience that didn't need to be babied because of ignorance.

"...saying things like that just invites bullshit to happen, you know?" I informed the empty alley before I returned to the process of limping my way back home.

A few days later, a Pedlar's certificate showed up at Ipponmatsu's shop with my name on it.

…Smoker had a weird idea of what counted as an apology gift, I thought to myself as I put it into my art bag, but I wasn't going to complain about the break.

I could, however, start to worry about this being the calm before the storm.

Author's Notes

The Pedlar's certificate bit was based on a bit of interaction from the original Luck of the Draw and then modified based on the UK's Pedlars Act 1871. It's not detailed but it's not a detailed interaction so it's fine.

Murasame (as also seen in Shuffle Odyssey) is a blunt copy of Shusui, having all of the named blade's incredible durability and weight, but none of its cutting edge.

Sword care talk was a bit involved but I wanted to get Ipponmatsu in early (he's been present in just about every one of the drafts/attempts at redoing Luck of the Draw) and in an organic way, so that's why that's all there. And yes, I do think Tashigi is unspeakably annoying.

The talk about what it's like being an internet artist… yeah, I needed the vent.

The street children are based on One Piece video game characters - the so-far unseen Yuta and the inspiration for Alexandria (in the form of one of the selectable support characters) are from Set Sail Pirate Crew while others will take cues from the Legend of Rainbow Island. Yes, I am leaning on PS1 and Wonderswan One Piece RPGs for some story stuff, it's fun.

First song I learned to play on guitar was a basic tab version of Bink's Sake (with a lot of help from my brother, who's a very talented musician, no bias involved). I wasn't good, but enthusiasm will carry a lot with that sort of thing.

As for money calculations - Laine's art made her $50-ish dollars, which I based on how much I made doing two commissions at one point - but both were relatively small scale, which felt appropriate to two pieces of pre-made semi-generic art and from the meterstick of someone who doesn't quite have a local's understanding for appropriate pricing.

The Dollar to Beri conversation actually used is based on the real (current) JPY to USD conversion rate, rather than Laine's highly simplified version, which, while generally having the gist, is off. But it's not like she's doing exact money exchange, so it's mostly an internal valuation problem.