Behold, this fic is returned.
XXXXX
If there was one good thing about the time loops, it was that they could repeat the parties. And more importantly re-eat the food.
Luffy was propped up against a wall, distinctly ball-like and bloated from how much he'd shoved down his gullet.
"I'm just not strong enough to fight Blackbeard yet." He complained to his crew. "And I can't get strong enough with these stupid time loops."
"Then why not simply go around him?" Robin asked, holding a glass of fine wine.
Thanks to their carefully executed plan, which Luffy gave her full credit for, she ended up being considered a national hero in Alabasta, much to her bemusement. King Cobra could not announce such a thing without drawing the wrath of the World Government of course, but she was being treated with the highest respect. It was a strange change of pace for her.
"But he's right there!" Luffy whined. "I wanna kick his ass!"
"Idiot!" Nami screeched, although with less force than normally since she was also pretty stuffed. "How many times did you have to fight Crocodile because you wanted to 'kick his ass'?"
"Why not just let Ace kick his ass?" Usopp suggested, wanting no part of such a scary pirate.
"Because I wanna do it!"
"Ace is going to be pissed at us for lying to him about where to find Blackbeard." Zoro commented.
"It's for the best." Robin said unrepentantly. "According to Captain-san, Ace being defeated and captured by Blackbeard is what allowed the Marines to bait Whitebeard into attacking Marineford. That mess is best avoided."
Although learning that the Straw Hats were the crew that Jaguar D. Saul had promised would become her family had been enough for her to join them, she still carried the mental scars of Ohara's destruction. The thought of facing the full might of the Marines terrified her. She had not hesitated for a moment in lying to Ace to send him on a wild goose chase.
"Damn right, sister!" Nami and Usopp cheered, cowardly as ever.
"Yeah!" Chopper joined in, simply for the sake of joining in.
"I still wanna kick his ass!" Luffy said mulishly.
"You will have plenty of opportunity for it." Robin assured him. "A pirate as ambitious as him could only be after the One Piece. We will not complete our voyage without encountering him again."
"Okay." The rubberman grumbled, but accepted it. Makino had always told him that good things come to those who wait. It had never made sense to him, but maybe she was on to something.
"Robin-chwan is so smart!" Sanji gushed.
"Why did you need to go into that bar anyway?" Nami asked curiously.
"We were going to ask about Sky Island and the City of Gold." Luffy answered, knowing what was coming next.
"CITY OF GOLD?!" Nami yelled, the light of greed shining in her eyes.
"Yeah, there's soooo much gold up there." Luffy nodded, used to his navigator's antics by now. "Enel made a whole flying ship out of it."
"A ship made out of gold." Nami whispered reverently, imagining what it would be like to sail across the world in such a blinged out vessel. "WE NEED TO GO THERE!"
"Are there angels in Sky Island?!" Sanji asked urgently.
"Mmm!" Luffy nodded. "Conis was our friend."
"Conis-chan!" The cook exclaimed rapturously, imagining a beautiful winged girl. "WE NEED TO GO THERE!"
"Are there strong swordsmen in Sky Island?" Zoro got into it.
"There was one guy there with a sword made of cloud."
"We need to go there."
"Are there any medicinal plants in Sky Island?" Chopper asked, also getting in on it.
Luffy thought about it for a second. He honestly had no idea, but everything was bigger. Bigger was better, so the medicinal plants had to be even more medicinal, right?
"There are super medicinal plants."
"I wanna go there!" The reindeer enthused."
"Robin, there's also history and a poneglyph up there." Luffy remembered, not wanting her to be left out.
"Ah." Robin smiled in amusement at the hamfisted manipulation. Could it even be called manipulation when it was so blatant? "We need to go there."
"Are there strong enemies there?" Usopp's teeth chattered fearfully.
"Yeah, God is a real asshole."
"YOU PICK A FIGHT WITH GOD?!" The liar roared. "We can't go up there, guys, for Captain Usopp is a man of deep faith."
"WE'RE GOING!" Nami, Sanji, and Zoro shouted him down.
"They do call me the Devil Child." Robin mused teasingly.
"You guys sound like you're going to have so much fun." Vivi, who had been quiet up until now, spoke in a trembling voice.
"You can still come with us, Vivi." Luffy offered instantly. He knew that she felt like she needed to stay for her people, but he was going to miss her!
"I would love to, but my country needs me." The princess shook her head reluctantly. Hearing that she had made this decision in the first loop only solidified her stance more.
"But the loop will reset anyway, so what does it matter?" Luffy argued.
"It may look like that to you, but I only get one life."
"Aww." It would have been so cool and different to have Vivi with them.
XXXXX
With the much smaller amounts of chaos caused in Alabasta, their exit was also much smoother. Captain Smoker, for one, always remained several steps behind them and never truly managed to catch up. By the time he unraveled the suspicious situation of Baroque Works, it was all over and Alabasta was celebrating its return to peace. Captain Hina was also not called in to blockage the kingdom to prevent the Straw Hats from escaping.
This in turn meant that Bon Clay didn't need to sacrifice himself to let them get away. He was tempted to let the Marines capture him anyway, after hearing that the legendary Okama Queen was in Impel Down, but Luffy was able to convince him otherwise.
Well, able to appeal to his emotions anyway, which was also how he'd been convinced to turn on Baroque Works. The Clone Clone Fruit user was easily moved by strong emotions and Luffy's disjointed story about their adventure in Impel Down was emotional enough that he accepted the story of time travel ws a matter of course. Accepting that letting himself get caught was a bad idea was small potatoes compared to that.
This easy escape meant no damage to their ship and a faster trip to Jaya. The different timing also meant that they did not encounter the dropping derelict ship or the Saruyama Brothers.
As per their plan, they sailed right past Mock Town to avoid Blackbeard. Luffy sat broodily upon his special seat, glared at the place, and ground his teeth furiously, but did not rush off to fight the powerful, treacherous pirate.
And so they reached the house of Mont Blanc Cricket without incident.
XXXXX
Cricket was having lunch when there was a sudden knock on the door. This was already weird, because he didn't get visitor. The occasional idiot who thought to steal the gold trinkets he recovered from the bottom of the sea, yes. Actual visitors, no.
"I'm coming in." And that was the second weirdness. After politely knocking, this dumb-looking kid in a straw hat very impolitely just let himself in without so much as waiting for a response.
"Don't just go in!" The skinny long nose with the straw hat kid yelled.
"What the hell do you want?" Cricket asked, preparing to fight.
"To go to Sky Island." The straw hat kid said without hesitation, pointing his finger upwards.
Cricket didn't see what that had to do with him, so he turned back to his food. "Then get going."
"We need you and the monkey brothers to fix up our ship so that we can ride the knock-up stream." The straw hat kid continued. "And could you do something to protect the Merry's keel so that she doesn't get hurt?"
Cricket put down his spoon again and stared at the kid, finally noticing that he had strong eyes. "You're talking like you've done this before."
"Time travel." The kid stated.
"Don't just tell that to everyone you meet!" An orange-haired girl shouted furiously and smacked him over the head.
"But Diamond-head Old Guy is cool." The straw hat kid whined.
"What was that about time travel?" Cricket asked incredulously.
"I'm stuck in a time loop." The straw hat kid explained. "You became a pirate to get away from being called a liar, then you settled here to find out if Noland was really a liar or not. It's a duel with the man who ruined your life." He nodded to himself firmly.
That wasn't something that just anyone could know, not without talking to him first. "And you've been to Sky Island before."
"That's right!" Straw hat kid nodded again. "That's where the City of Gold is. It got blasted into the sky by the knock-up stream."
Cricket's cigarette fell out of his mouth in shock. Of course! That made perfect sense and it explained why he couldn't find it on the bottom of the ocean.
Wait, no. That didn't make any sense at all! How would the knock-up stream get under the island? It wasn't like islands floated on the ocean!
Cricket shook his head and abandoned that flash of reason. This was the Grand Line, common sense didn't apply.
"You know you'll probably die trying to ride the knock-up stream?" He warned.
"Nami can navigate it." The straw hat kid said with absolute confidence in his navigator.
"Damn right!" The orange-haired girl asserted.
"And once we're up there, we'll kick God's ass and ring the golden bell so that you'll know we found it." The kid assured.
Cricket didn't know about kicking God's ass, but he liked the spunk of these kids. Grinning, he stood up. "Alright, kid, you've got a deal. But you'll need something to help you get over the knock-up stream."
"The funny bird with the big beak."
Huh, maybe he really was a time traveler. Cricket had heard of weirder shit happening on the Grand Line.
XXXXX
Having never gone to Mock Town, there were no interruptions by Bellamy, chases by Blackbeard, or last minute realizations that they had forgotten something. There was a bit of a kerfuffle when the Saruyama Brothers showed up, but Luffy made fast friends with them.
The modifications to Merry went perfectly smoothly and they had plenty of time to get to the location of the knock-up stream.
Alas that the keel reinforcement Luffy had asked for threw off the Going Merry's balance and caused it to plummet back down to the blue sea, killing the entire crew.
XXXXX
"So you want to ride the knock-up stream, but you don't want to crack your ship's keel." Cricket puffed on his cigarette.
Luffy grunted irritably, grumpy from failing to continue his adventure because of something so dumb. This kind of thing never happened on the first run through!
"Damn right! That ship was a gift from Kaya, we have to take good care of it." Usopp nodded firmly.
"A gift from a sweetheart, hmm? A man needs to protect such things." Cricket agreed gravely, ignoring Usopp's red-faced sputtering. "We can probably make a better, smoother keel reinforcement if we take our time, but you'll have to stick around for a few days."
"We have time." Nami was quick to assert, looking to Luffy. "We have time, right?"
Luffy thought hard about their adventure in the sky. It had been a long time ago and he still wasn't very good at remembering stuff, but he'd been forced to think about what was time sensitive and what wasn't.
After a solid minute of hard thinking, he smacked his first into his palm. "Enel is going to destroy Sky Island!"
"OH NO, CONIS-CHAN!" Sanji wailed in despair. "We have to go save her!"
"You've never even met her, Swirly Brow." Zoro grunted, unimpressed.
"I DON'T HAVE TO MEET A LADY TO LOVE HER!" Sanji roared.
"He's going to destroy the entire island and all of its history?" Robin asked calmly. "Why?"
"HIEEE! Robin is scary!" Chopper shivered, sensing the demonic aura coming from the oldest member of their crew. Nami and Usopp joined him in a terrified huddle.
"Because he's a jerk." Luffy hadn't really paid attention to any of Enel's rants, but he got the gist of it.
"Cricket-san, would some extra hands help you make a proper reinforcement for our keel faster?" Robin asked. Calmly.
"Uh, I guess." Cricket eyeballed the woman uncertainly. "This seems really important to you, so we'll work as fast as possible."
"Thank you, Cricket-san." She smiled at him. Pleasantly. "It's very important that we arrive in the sky safely so that we can commit blasphemy properly."
XXXXX
The second go around, they reached the White Sea. One of the first things that happened was that the layer of wood attached to the bottom of their ship cracked and fell away, broken by the force of the knock-up stream.
"That would have been the Merry's keel if you hadn't mentioned anything." Usopp went pale at the thought of losing the ship.
"It did happen the first time." Luffy said sadly. "We really didn't take care of Merry as well as we should have. She barely made it to the next island."
"Well, we know better now!" Usopp said loudly. "She'll go with us all around the world."
Luffy said nothing. He did love the Going Merry, but he loved the Thousand Sunny, too. And he remembered what he'd been told about the seas ahead – a ship made in one of the Blues would never survive the whole Grand Line.
"I wonder if we can swim in these clouds like they were water?" Usopp had wandered over to the side and was now looking down with interest. "I mean, if they can hold up a ship then that means it would hold us up, too. Right?"
That tickled something in Luffy's brain, but he couldn't quite remember what. Something about falling?
"AH! Usopp fell through the clouds!" Chopper yelled in distress.
Luffy instantly threw himself after the ship's sniper, not wanting to go back to the beginning for such a dumb reason.
Alas, he was too late.
XXXXX
OMAKE – Failing to Impress.
Captain Hector Barbossa and his crew surrounded their former captain, Jack Sparrow, and the two boys he had duped into following him on his quest to reclaim the Black Pearl. Held by two of his men was young Elizabeth Swan, whom they had believed was Turner for so long.
"You've always been a lucky man, Jack." Barbossa said, slowly walking towards his former captain. "Even our mutiny worked out in your favor, allowing ye to escape the curse of the Aztec gold. But you've never been stupid, even though you put in so much effort acting like it."
"I take offense to that." Jack objected.
Barbossa ignored him. "So I must wonder… what is it did you think you'd accomplish, walking right up to us like this, alongside with young Will Turner no less?"
"In my defense, that wasn't my idea." Jack gesticulated vaguely and in some direction with his arms. "See, I'm not the captain of this venture. That would be my friend here, Monkey D. Luffy."
Everyone turned to look at the man in question, who was currently having a staring contest with the crew's pet monkey. Upon hearing the word 'monkey' said monkey shrieked and Luffy shrieked back.
"I see." Barbossa was nonplussed. "Alright then… Captain Luffy… What is it you want?"
Luffy turned away from the monkey and looked at him. "Ah, I heard that you were skeletons and thought that maybe my musician, Brook, was with you."
"… Your musician be cursed like us?" Barbossa blinked.
"Cursed?" Luffy repeated, tilting his head. "No, Brook ate a Devil Fruit. He can still eat and poop and ask to see women's panties."
There was a lengthy silence as the crew of the Black Pearl digested this.
"I mean, we could ask to see women's panties. Wouldn't do us much good, though." One of the pirates said philosophically. "I do wish we could still eat and poop, though."
"I never figured out what good women's panties are either." Luffy nodded in agreement. "Brook and Sanji seemed to like them though, so they must be important."
"Regardless!" Barbossa said sharply, not wanting to this inane conversation to continue any further. "You are surrounded by a host of undying pirates, Captain Luffy. What be stoppin' us from killin' ye and, heh, First Mate Jack Sparrow, afore we seize young William Turner to rid ourselves of the curse?"
The pirates stepped forward menacingly, brandishing their weapons.
Luffy stared at them expressionlessly, raised his leg, and then let fly a rubbery whip kick that sent half the undead pirate crew scattering to the winds in pieces.
"And that's why I'm the first mate for now, savvy?" Jack said snidely.
"Aye, that would do it." Barbossa acknowledged, knowing that it was too late to turn back. "Men, kill Captain Luffy!"
"You guys are so weak." Luffy complained, easily scattering them around. "Even the Thriller Bark zombies were better than this."
Will took the opportunity to free Elizabeth, who had been watching anxiously since their arrival. Now she was watching in baffled shock as one man, little more than a boy of not very impressive stature, humiliated dozens of armed and immortal pirates bare-handed.
"What… who?!" She sputtered, gesturing wildly towards the spectacle.
"Yes, it's quite a mystery, isn't it?" Jack grinned, watching the carnage.