Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece

I had a whole speech about making it to the second chapter and how that makes me feel, but I'm too tired from work to really say. What I can do is give you a little trivia about the character Christopher will meet in this chapter. Originally, he showed up in a oneshot fanfiction I made with the powers of a zoan crab. Funny thing about making stories; you can delete them but you can't forget all the characters that apear in your head.

Well, hope this chapter isn't too jarring to read. Thank you.

XXX

Crab Refugee Island

Pirates were sailing on their galleon towards Crab Refugee Island. The wood was recently replaced showing some of the exposed lumber melded into the red hull, the sails were white with a red skull eating a green snake, and the masthead was woman's body but with a hawk head.

The captain made the masthead after his precious hawk who perched in vigil waiting to cry out for the crew to attack. The captain was wearing a black tricorn, had a long wool looking gray beard, and a black collar from his black vest.

They were sailing towards the island in an attempt to pillage and rape. The nearly they sailed the more up close a certain speck seemed to come from the sea. They got close and were now greeted by a guy swimming towards them. He was bald, had a white beard, a saggy brown woolen shirt, was pretty out of shape with a beer belly sticking out.

The pirate wasted no time aiming his frontal cannons at the swimmer. They volley came several at a time with their target perfectly precise. They came close, he jumped over all of them.

The hawk raised its mantels as the man midair transformed into a vulture, a lammergeier. He was gold with a beard hanging from under his beak. He was just flying for a fleeting moment, the sky alight with a golden reflection, and then he transformed back into his elderly body plummeting towards the ship.

He landed with something encoating his legs making the landing go a lot smoother. Before he touched the deck, pirates all circled around with muskets and flintlocks. The circle was a good strategy in entrapping them so they couldn't escape, but one wrong shot and they could be shooting an ally in the head.

They fired altogether a volley of tiny bullets, and they ricocheted off something sheening on his skin. At least half of them received a bullet through the head or the heart by this while the others only received mortal wounds.

The ones only injured would soon experience what death was like when Kobrin's hands turned into bear paws as he weaved them through the necks of everyone. They couldn't move their arms fast enough to try to stop the air from accelerating their blood flow gushing blood from their necks-they died quickly.

Kobrin now faced the captain looking way too calm despite losing all his crew by just one person. He stood up, slouched his back down, and paced his feet moving towards him. Suddenly, barn red wings unfurled from behind his back.

In an instance he turned into a humanoid kestrel with a beak for an orifice, ruffled feathered wings for hands, and his attire completely replaced with a tawny belly of smaller, underdeveloped feathers. He screeched loudly for old Kobrin to hear and shudder in fear, but the old man just shook his backpack he was lugging around.

The pirate soared heavenward in a flash, flying in circles over and over–turbulent and fast–when he soon created a large twister raging towards his ship. It was a reckless decision to destroy his own ship just to defeat an elderly looking man, but without a crew he could just fly from island to island doing everything he used to do with them but with more discretion.

He however wouldn't get to relish that feeling…

His own hawk swooped in and pierced him in the heart with its sharp talons. The moment the talons penetrated the skin, damaging his heart, a red fruit with stems wing-esque fell out. It was falling towards the ocean. The next thing the inanimate object knew it felt a turbulent white flash from behind sending it full throttle towards Kobrin who caught it as feasibly as catching a baseball.

Once he had the fruit in his grasp, he opened the flap of his bag revealing a multitude of different fruits compartmentalized in different sections, and stuffed it in one of them.

The hawk perched on his extended hand. They starred with no expression on their faces. It ended when the hawk started pampering the man with its tiny head, nuzzling him with its beak like a cat.

To make a bizarre victory even queerer, all the pirates rose up as ghosts surrounding Kobrin. They looked like they were going to kill him, yet they bowed before him as a king among them.

"Set sail to my shipyard."

They obliged. While they were working the riggin and moving around the deck in haste, he could leisurely walk to the vast sea and stare at the water as it shimmered in the mid-afternoon sun. He felt no pride in his easy victory; he only enjoyed knowing he lived and continued to see the beauty of the world while they were his underlings.

"Someday…I'll get to see the whole world this way with my son. I'll be waiting for you, Christopher."

XXX

"One parfait with strawberry sauce and sliced bananas for the lady; on the house."

The difference between how he treated her and how he treated Christopher was night-and-day. He asked Christopher what he wanted the moment he sat down while she was offered a parfait, allowed to get a pint size glass of any drink she wanted for free, and was allowed to have a meal carefully roasted just for her. If Christopher wasn't worried more about what kind of blackmail the lady had for him, he would teach the chef why he shouldn't treat someone like trash in front of someone he treats like a princess.

Christopher got barbeque eel with rice–the rice looking like it was picked out of a trash can and only a tiny sliver of something remotely tasting like sauce on the slimy, cold eel.

When they were finished, the lady put a giant stack of beli on the table before even waiting for the bill. If Christopher's math was correct, there must be ten thousand beli in that pile. Whoever she was she must be obscenely rich to be flaunting that kind of money as if it were pocket change. Then she stared intensely into his eyes ready for the blackmail to be dished out.

"My name is L-Anya. Remember that name: you're going to need to invoke it to an umpteen number of people if you're going to sneak around Rough Reef Islet."

Christopher answered the best way he could. "By the time you alert the authorities of my whereabouts, I'll be on another island hiding as low as a mouse. If by chance they are waiting for me outside, then I will escape another way. Whatever leverage you thought you had on me, it's officially been plucked."

Their whole dinner she had a little smile on her face with her eyes closed probably thinking she had the whole world in the palm of her hand. Now she looked at him with slanted eyes, a blockage of teeth, and a felicity in her eyes only a master schemer could have.

"I understand you must have some sort of powers or abilities that make you think the rules don't tether you as much as they would a sailor or a restaurant owner like that brown nose pig in the kitchen. Those feelings you have are going to be plucked when you hear what I have to say."

She urged him to lean over the table, which he did, and whispered something in his ear. He now knew something she did–the information made him a little nervous but his face was as strewn as a bow string trying to hide his nervousness.

He leaned back in his chair. "What's the job?"

She took a glass of water and sipped. Next she pulled out a beli bill she used as a makeshift floss to take out any gunk from the parfait or fish she had. Once her mouth was cleared she started explaining.

"A few months ago, many Minks, Fish-men, Snackneck people, and of course normal people were hunted and contained by a rich despot over on the Rough Reef Islet. I visited this despot two weeks ago hoping to come to an agreement with him–to my surprise it didn't take much to convince him they should be released.

"He was of course just telling me that so I wouldn't take more affirmative actions to let them go. Normally, when someone tells you they'll do something but never gets around to it, that swindler needs to be punished. However, since his father and my father were once such great friends trying to forage a long-lasting unity in their lineage, I can't just go and attack him. This is where you come in. I need you to sail to the Rough Reef Islet, hide yourself in the castle and assassinate him."

"Kill him? Isn't it your priority to free the prisoners?"

"Freeing them is too suspicious on me. I was seen by his servants trying to make peace and break bread with him over freeing the slaves. If he were to die while I am nowhere on the island than naturally as his closest friend I would have say on how his unfinished business should be handled.

"You may be thinking that sending you wouldn't divert suspicion away from me, and you'd be correct. But let's think of the now–no witnesses around seeing me talk to you. They aren't seeing me telling you to go to the pier, look for a wizen old fellow named Eugene, sail there with him, rest for a day or two after gaining some sea legs, and then kill him anyway you can. All they know is I went to a restaurant and I walked out with a relished look on my face; could be the chef was just very good at cooking."

Christopher flipped his eel over with his fork. Her eyes glanced down for a fleeting moment knowing the food in reality wasn't what she relished.

"I'll leave first than you can eat your fish, go to the bathroom and then head over to–"

"Wait, wait, wait, wait." Christopher did everything in his power trying to get her to listen to him. "I never said anything about doing any of this. This is your problem; you can fix it yourself. Besides, all I'm guilty of is making sure three evil people–and they were evil by all accounts–are never seen again, saving who knows how many lives. Whether this ruler is just or not, he has people who follow him making me out to be the villain if I do anything to strip them of that ruler.

"So thanks but no thanks, you can have me arrested for all I care, and you were playing on giving me up the moment afterwards to have someone for them to blame. You are not as intelligent as you think you are."

"I never said I was an intelligent girl. I'm a princess, I may be given better teachers and extravagance of food to eat but never did I claim to be smart. What I am though is full of secrets that you might want me to share. Of course you'll be on the run for taking someone's life, but you'll also be chasing what you're after most of all?"

"And what's that?"

"The Ancient Foods of the if I told you I know where you can find those recipes."

Christopher couldn't hide his surprise. How did she know about those; he thought the books that could give a clue to them burned down with the rest of the Island of Ohara. They weren't just food, they were turning stones to finally surpassing his father. Christopher's demeanor would not allow him to show surprise for too long; he was back looking at her like they were playing a betting game.

"Suppose I believe you know where these recipes are…suppose you keep your word and give me them…suppose that by the end of this we'll ever see each other again…why me? Why would you share something like that with me?"

She didn't answer him. She whistled and waved her hand in the air to get the chef's attention. He came jolting towards her like his heart was leaping out of his chest where she gave him the fakest of sweet goodbyes, and he ate it up waving his hand goodbye to her.

After she was gone he continued to grimace right at Christopher wanting him to finish what he had, leave the shop and never return.

When Christopher goes into a restaurant he usually feels sorry for the employees who have to clean up the mess he makes on their plates, but with this man he was almost tempted to pour salt over the plate just to irritate him. Instead he squatted his eyes and kept his lips thin to show his disdain of him.

With dinner done and a contract that needed to be absolved, he took his leave towards the docks.

When Christopher reached the docks he saw sailors preparing their conveys for at least a fortnight of sailing, men hugging their wives or men hugging men before they departed, and men singing strange sailor songs with an accordion.

Finding the one she called Eugene wasn't going to be easy; most of these sailors had beards mixed with a body that was either very muscular or flabby. It didn't help how the men flurried to and fro the dock to crates or bags sprawled on the ground with Christopher continuously having to weave near the edge of the water–being a Devil Fruit user that was like standing on the edge of a volcano.

To try and stop himself from falling into the water, he stuck out his tongue that acted more like a lasso with its length wrapping it around one of the sailors' arm and slinging himself back behind the flurry. He certainly heard a lot of sailor gruntles from the saliva melded with the tight force of the constriction then, but by the time he turned around Christopher was nowhere to be seen.

The excitement continued when he found a man with a white beard, a bald spot on his head but his nape covered in white hair with jagged ends jutting above his head, an eskimo beige coat with tufts of white cotton hard to see with his neck-hair, and black rubber boots. He was playing with a lasso before swiveling around to see a young lad towering over him on the dock while he was sitting on a small dinghy.

"Hello. Did L-Anya call you over to me?" He tossed Christopher a rope he caught with quick-reflexes. "Then get to work and tell me what she wants from you, so I know what kind of shopping I'll need to do."

XXX

They pushed off an hour and a half later. Christopher wasn't a sailor like all the men at the dock were, but if there was one thing he was good at it was handling a rope. The rope was needed to tie around a log connected to a dock so the dinghy didn't drift out to sea when they reached Rough Reef Islet.

Christopher explained everything to the one called Eugene leaving out the reason why he was going to sail to this island. He left out the part about the ancient recipe, he told it the same way a marine would tell an inmate how their going to spend the rest of their life in Impel Down, so for all he knew the wizen old sailor didn't believe him. However, that turned out to be untrue since he allowed Christopher to stay on the dock when they finally pushed off.

He immediately took out a whetstone and started scrapping his sword; a good fifteen seconds of seeing sparks flying before Eugene grabbed him by the shoulder.

"Grab the net and start catching some fish, dummy."

He made a teed off sound just once before crawling on the boat for the net. He couldn't stand while on the boat. He was going to have problems throwing the net into the water; he couldn't raise his hand higher than his pelvis while crouched down.

Fortunately for him he wrapped his elongated tongue around the net and let his tongue do the work.

He had to keep his tongue around this net. Wasn't hard to upheave something like a net with his tongue, however, it was tedious work he couldn't even complain about while his tongue completely overshadowed his mouth. He decided to move around the boat and check on the supplies.

He found a lot of useful equipment stashed under the seat-just not any food like fruits or vegetables for them to eat. He was thinking this all the way up until fish got caught in his net; then he pulled them up letting them flop on deck.

Seeing these fish only raised the temerity Eugene had about sailing to an island a long ways away with only whatever they caught in the sea-and Christopher knew even if they survived the journey a diet of only fish was going to cause problems later down the road.

He looked up, a two tooth thing came rushing towards him slamming him into the mast. Christopher now glanced at a humanoid scorpion with the beard and nape of Eugene, and a yellow strawhat with purple ribbons laced around it. So Eugene was a Devil Fruit user as well.

"You have a lot of trouble relaxing, and you still couldn't see me coming." His zoan form made his voice sound a little more guttural, or maybe he was just speaking to him less like the carefree bumbling old man Christopher thought he was. "If Lady L-Anya really wanted you to take part on this journey than why did you come to me without her?"

Christopher's mouth had enough wiggle room. "Why did you set sail hearing a facade like that? Not that I was trying to deceive you; that bitch just does what she wants."

He pressed harder on his collar bone with his tail.

His fervent loyalty was going to do more damage than honor her chastity. He envied her for that, if anyone talked about him they would just leave the insult unwavering to the point they would join in and laugh some more...he was allowed to live but he still grows up to be a disappointment in his fathers' eyes.

"Inflicting harm isn't going to change the way she is using me for her own ambitions and even if I reach port I'll still be wanted by the Marine's. So you can either kill me or let me sail with you in a path that ends with both of us dying of malnutrition."

Christopher knew no matter how well someone pleaded to someone there was no chance it was going to work if there wasn't a sliver of truth in his words. More often than not, pleading never worked and the one being held against their will dies held captive looking into the eyes of their torturer-Christopher was a lucky-son-of-a-woman-who-abandoned-him that was let go.

"The way you mention her, even if it is taboo of a lady such as her, has some veracity to it. She is someone who just does whatever she wants and acts coy about it. You are also right with how we'd never be able to survive out in sea this long with just the stash I brought. On the other hand...I picked these paths to sail where we'd collide with the right kind of sailors on the way there."

As he said this, a scarlet galleon sailed its way towards there dinghy. The sails were those of three green snakes staring at the collapsed red bone body of a skeleton. Christopher looked at the boat for a moment getting the idea of what he was saying.

"I'm an assassin; not a thief."

Eugene shrugged then tipped his hat looking promiscuous. "If by all means you don't want to steal, don't. Just remember, it's our only chance to get things other than fish on here. Can your morals deal with that?"

Christopher didn't waste a moment to answer that. With his legs invigored with the characteristics of a toad, he leaped off the dinghy soaring towards the galleon. Eugene had a quick chuckle from how the boy changed his tune very quickly.

And then-he went full throttle towards the ship still as big and hard scaled as a scorpion in humanoid form.