Chapter 2: Arrival

Every time I wake up, I think I'm home.

Just for a second.

I feel myself wake up naturally, and there's always a jolt of stress when I think I've missed my alarm, that I'm late for work.

Then I see a ceiling of unpainted boards.

I feel the scratch of a rough spun blanket.

I realize I'm not on a queen size bed, but on a tiny homemade futon that my child feet already hang off of.

I remember I'm a child again.

I remember that I died.

I think about that moment almost every day.

I think about the events that led up to it.

The alarm that woke me up early, and the shock of the light switch that kept me that way. I remember what I had for breakfast.

Seriously me? Grape Nuts? It was your last fucking day, you couldn't have had eggs and bacon? Or pancakes or something?

Man I'm hungry.

That's another thing that's different. I'm always fucking hungry, even when I get plenty to eat! I was getting three meals a day, and it felt like every day those three meals filled me up less and less.

One thing that has stayed the same is my name. Jasper Morgan. Or I guess in this world it would be Morgan Jasper.

I ran my hand though my purple hair.

When I first got here, I had made sure to get it cut as soon as I could. It was now short on the sides and back, with the top sticking straight up like fiery purple broom.

I hadn't had much say over the style. That's just how the matron of the orphanage decided to cut it. She was quite young for a orphanage matron, only in her mid thirties at most. I had let her do what she wanted because she seemed exited about it, and well… she was pretty hot.

I sighed, standing up from where I was sitting on the roof. It was getting late, Matron Lia would probably be wondering where I was.

A young voice sounded out from ground level, "Done moping already? I thought you'd be up there till midnight!" I sighed, and casually stepped off the roof and landed on the ground undamaged.

I looked over at the source of the voice. She was a short little red headed girl with pigtails and overalls named Risa, and ever since I arrived six months ago, she had made it her life's mission to boss me around.

Case in point, as soon as I dropped off the roof, she puffed her cheeks in frustration and began bossing. "Mama Lia says you shouldn't do that any more remember? You could get hurt!"

I rolled my eyes to heaven, "Risa, remember that tree I fell out of last week? That was like twice as high the roof, and I was fine. "

She stamped her tiny foot. "Mama Lia also says that you shouldn't do it because one of the younger kids could see you and try it themselves!" I started walking around the house toward the front door and she followed me.

"That's fair" I admitted, and she got a look of triumph on her face, but it was short lived as I continued, "But the only kid that saw me jump was you. Are you going to try it?"

I held the front door for her and she stomped through and turned around to make sure I followed.

She answered, "Of course I wouldn't! Jumping off the roof is stupid! It's dumb and against the rules! You're an idiot and only idiots jump off the roof!"

If I were actually ten years old, I might have gotten mad at her calling me an idiot. But as it was, her insults were just adorable.

I smiled at her cuteness, and sidestepped her anger by speaking fondly, "I'm grateful that you care enough to worry about me Risa, but I'm fine, I promise." And then I winked at her and turned away, heading to the boys bunk room.

There was a few seconds of shocked silence, and then she exploded, "WHO THE HELL WOULD WORRY ABOUT YOU?! GET BACK HERE! MORON! BUTTFACE! BONE HEAD! LOSER! IM OLDER THAN YOU, YOU KNOW!"

Older than me huh? What a joke. When I had first arrived in this world I didn't know what to think. I had told Lia, the orphanage Matron, that I didn't remember anything, and that I thought I was ten. It was my best guess as to my physical age, and she wrote down my birthday as the day I had been found. The only problem about being 10 was, Risa was 11.

I closed the door to the bunk room and her shouting continued, muted. I cleaned out my ear with a pinky, waiting for the ringing to stop.

She seemed to realize it was closed, because she opened it and kept hollering at the top of her voice. "I HATE YOU AND YOU SMELL! YOU SUCK!" Finally finished, she slammed the door, and I could hear her stomping down the hallway toward the baby nursery where Matron Lia was.

Dang. She'd tell on me to Lia and I'd have to sit through another lecture about "not riling up the other children" as if Risa wasn't the only one I had problems getting along with. I was chill with everyone else. Still worth it though.

One of the other boys in the room, a blond kid named Hedge, spoke up. "Wow…you really got her going this time…what did you say?"

As I started changing into PJs I told him.

When he didn't understand why she was mad I just shrugged. I probably could have explained it to him but I didn't feel like it.

We talked about random stuff he liked like cards and dinosaurs until Matron Lia came to have a word with me as expected.

I sat through the lecture, nodding in the right places and apologizing.

I could have talked back or argued, but I didn't because Matron Lia was a good woman. I owed her.

She took me in when no one else would.

When I had arrived here six months ago, it was in a pretty gruesome way.

After I died via Escalade, I had woken up crammed into a dark, rotten smelling prison of tight fleshy walls.

While I initially assumed it to be a mothers womb of some kind, the smell and the stinging fluid surrounding me convinced me otherwise. I was inside a stomach! I had literally no fucking idea what was going on at the time, but luckily I was soon saved when a hunting knife stabbed through from the outside.

When the stomach of the defeated creature was slit open, I came spilling out, completely nude and looking like the child version of my custom character I'd seen when I started the "game".

As I opened my new eyes, I saw that the creature whose belly I was in had been a giant snake!

Looking at its corpse, it was far bigger than the prehistoric titanoboa, supposedly the largest snake to ever exist on earth.

I fainted.

After I regained consciousness, I started learning about my situation. I was on a Large Island with lots of mountains and forests known as the kingdom of Typhron.

The two hunters who had killed the snake had done so for sport. They had traveled with a merchant caravan across the red line all the way to from East blue just to kill some of the beasts in the deep woods of this island. It was all above board, they had permits and everything, they weren't poachers, just big game hunters.

As soon as I heard this I asked them to repeat themselves. Red line? East blue? I must have heard wrong! They reiterated that I was in the kingdom of Typhron in North Blue.

I grabbed my hair, and finding it -far- longer than I expected, pulled a clump of it in front of my eyes.

It was purple.

I fainted again.

After this happened they had carted me back to the nearest town. The fact that I had "survived being eaten" wasn't all that crazy to them as snakes swallow their prey whole.

Their theory was, since my entire body was the size of the snake's head, it had snapped me up without even constricting me to death first, and that they had come upon the snake almost immediately after.

It was a good theory. When I had woken up again they shared it with me, and asked me why I had been running around naked in the forest? They reasoned I must have been naked before the snake ate me because if the stomach acid had worked long enough to dissolve my clothes, it would have dissolved my skin and eyeballs too.

I fainted for a third time.

I know, I know! What a weakling! Fainting not once, not twice, but three times?! I'm sorry ok? I wasn't in the best state of mind at the time! I already couldn't wrap my head around what was happening, and to top it off, they had to paint a word picture about how my skin and eyeballs very nearly melted off my body, and I just couldn't handle it!

It's because I had the physical brain of a child! That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Once we made it to the town, they asked around if anyone was missing a child, and told everyone what I looked like and how they found me.

This turned out to be a mistake.

They didn't know it, being from East Blue, and I didn't know it, being from another fucking planet, but in North Blue there exists a legend.

The legend tells of evil demons that take the form of human children in order to infiltrate families and bring ruin and death.

Where do these demons in human form come from? Oh you'll never guess!

In the legend, instead of being born of the womb of a woman, they are vomited up by serpents!

Strangely enough, this is what finally hammered through my skull that I was in the world of One Piece.

I remembered all of the decisions I had made during character creation, and this whole situation was exactly in line with the flaw I picked!

Stupid fucking manager or ROB or whoever you are. I know I was the one who picked that flaw but fuck you! I could have been spawned in like I had washed up on the beach, or in a cave with clothes and let me walk in to town!

But nnnooooo! I have to greet my new life via going directly from a car accident to THE INSIDE OF A FUCKING SNAKE!

My thoughts were interrupted by the voice of Matron Lia.

"Jasper! Are you listening to me?"

"Yeah! Totally!" I bullshitted.

"Oh you are? Then what did I just say?" Shit! She was calling my bluff!

Racking my brain for the things she usually repeated most, I answered, "even though the things I say aren't technically that bad, I shouldn't tease her in that way because she's weak to it?"

Lia said nothing, only raising an eyebrow.

I tried again, "even though she said the h word and slammed the door, I jumped off the roof which was worse?"

She let me squirm a few seconds in silence, and then spoke up,

"Both very good guesses, but incorrect. The exact sentence I just spoke was, 'Seagulls love croissants because they use them as clown noses.' Now I think that should have been pretty memorable in the middle of a serious conversation, wouldn't you?"

Fuck!

She got me good.

"Ok, ok, you got me. But shouldn't the fact that I knew the general content of what you're saying count for something? I mean… this situation isn't exactly new is it? The only reason we're having this type of conversation again is because Risa is mad and we're letting her feel like I'm in trouble so she can calm down right?"

Lia sighed and looked over her shoulder before crouching down and sitting on the floor. I sat down across from her, "Well…" she whispered, "you're not wrong. Sometimes I forget how mature you are." She looked at me as if deep in thought, and then took a deep steadying breath,

"Risa is going through… a faze right now where she's starting to have… feelings she doesn't understand. It'll start happening to you too in the next few years. You'll start to have chan-" I spoke up, cutting that shit off before it could get any further.

"Whoa whoa whoa! Hold on! You don't have to talk about this with me! I know about puberty! I know about sex! I know how babies are made and how to be safe and how I'll get boners and grow hair in places and stuff! Please no!"

She looked at me, puzzled, "where did you learn all this?"

I went silent.

FUCK!

Stay cool Jasper, stay cool!

I should have just suffered through it in silence!

Lucky for me, Lia took my silence for contemplation. She spoke again,

"Were you taught it before that snake ate you? Do you remember anything?"

I mustered up the courage to tell the truth. Well… part of the truth… from a certain point of view.

"I… remember my parents. What they look like, and most of the stuff they taught me. But I also know that they are dead. They have been for a few years now. But I still don't know where in this world I'm from! I don't think I'm from this world at all!"

That was as close to the truth as I was going to tell her.

She responded very strongly to my words, "You listen to me and you listen well! You are not a demon! You never have been! Those superstitious old fools that say any different are blowing smoke out their nose! I took you in because I saw a human who needed help, and I chose to help you! I don't care where you came from! The only thing I care about is the people I see in front of me! And right now I see you. Not who you were or where you came from, but you as you are right now! Whatever happened to you is not your fault! You can tell me if you need to, and I won't tell a soul!" She took a few breaths, and when she calmed a little, she took my face in her hands, and stared into my eyes, "But if you're not ready yet, you can take as much time as you need. Whatever will help you the most."

My breath hitched and I stared back at her.

Oh shit.

I think I might be in love.

I know I just said I couldn't tell her everything, but should I? I can trust her right?

I managed to squeak out a few words, and I tested the waters,

"You really mean all that? You won't tell anyone? You won't kick me out?"

She huffed in amusement. "Jasper! You can trust me! I will always help a child in need."

My heart clenched.

"But I… but I'm not…"

"Jasper" she spoke over me, "You are my child. As soon as I took you in, I took you as one of my sons. I will love you no matter what! You are my boy! To the end of the line!"

She looked at me with burning love in her eyes, like I could do no wrong.

I felt sick to my stomach.

I was an imposter. A betrayer. I may not be one of those demons from the dumb legend, I know I'm not. But I'm just as false as one. Just as invasive. Just as unnatural.

She was still looking at me. Waiting for my answer.

"I…I can't. I'm sorry! I'm sorry. I just…can't."

She pulled me into a warm hug that created shards of ice in my soul.

"Whenever you're ready Jasper, I'll be here. Even if that time is never, I'll still be here. My son."

"I know… and I love you for it."

She pulled away and put her hands on my shoulders, beaming happily at me, "Awww! I love you too Jasper!"

She tussled my hair and stood up. I stood up as well. During our conversation, it had gotten quite late, to the point it was completely dark. She had pulled me aside after everyone was in bed already, so lights were already out.

As we parted ways, she said, "goodnight Jasper, I love you"

I answered in a whisper, not sure if she could hear me, "Goodnight Lia. I love you too."

As she turned away I made sure to memorize everything about her I could.

Her raven black hair, tied back into a messy bun.

Her bright face, with light laugh lines and crows feet from all the happiness she shared.

Her body, which still retained some fitness from her days as a navigator for a merchant ship, but had become underweight from lean living.

Her shoulders slightly hunched from fatigue.

A slight abnormal curve in her spine from scoliosis.

A slight stutter in her step from a bad knee.

I saw it all. Memorized it all. Loved it all.

And then I left.

She had done more for me, loved me more purely than anyone ever had, save my late parents.

This was better for everyone involved. With the "demon" gone the donations would pick up again, which would mean better clothes, more toys like cards, better books about things like dinosaurs, and more food of better quality for all the kids.

As for me? I couldn't live a lie. Not again.
Lia had nothing but love for me, but it wasn't the kind of love I wanted. I could never ask for that kind of love from her without souring everything, without making it strange and sick, and I wasn't ever willing to do that to her.

But at the same time I couldn't pretend to be her son either. Because I would never ever see her like a mother.

These six months were great. They were useful. Until now, I wasn't in the mental state to be able to jump right into the meat of this world. But now, I think I was finally ready.

At the thought of setting off on my own, of becoming stronger and stronger until I conquered every beast on this island, I felt a strange excitement in my chest. Like a glowing ember bursting into flame, filling me with a strange new energy.

This world was fantastic, but dangerous. I needed to become dangerous too if I wanted to survive. But I'm not content with just surviving. I want to reach the top of this world! To be a transcendent existence spoken about in the same breath as Red Hair Shanks and Hundred Beast Kaido!

I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do with that power yet, but I knew that in this world, power equals freedom.

And you know what they say:

Live free or die hard.

Tomorrow, my training begins.

A/N: Alright! So while this is the first chapter technically set in the one piece world, there's not a whole lot of one piece stuff in here. XP
I really wanted to explore a character with the knowledge and life experience of an adult stuck in a child's body.
Also, our MC finally has a name!
I wrote this chapter first before I got into the training and action stuff we all want, because I hate it when characters literally die and lose everything they know and love and then shake it off immediately like oh well (shrug) get strong get harem yeeyeet! Jasper needed time to come to terms with his new life.
Also, this story will NOT be a harem. If there are multiple relationships, one will end before the other begins. Jasper ain't no cheater!