Obligatory disclaimer here, I do not own One Piece. One Piece is owned by Eichiro Oda and associated companies.
Along the coast of Sabody Archapelago, right in the area where all the ships were docked, the one and only SUPER cyborg Franky was taking his time as he walked, admiring the impressive design and craftsmanship of all the varied ships used by the fellow pirates and other visitors to the island. While most would immediately go for the shopping market or the amusement park if they were at Sabody for vacation and fun, those who had a true passion for ship building like Franky would always wait on that. For as tempting as the amusement parks and all the tourist stuff was, that would all be there tomorrow. What wasn't guaranteed to still be there tomorrow were all the interesting different ships that were docked.
As he walked, Franky found himself genuinely impressed and fascinated by the impressive craftsmanship and creativity of all the different ships. From a castle like ship that had slots on the bottom that Franky could guess let out tank treads from the way they were shaped, to a large ship styled to look like it was covered in pizza, and another one made to look as though it was made out of straw. All the ships held so much personality that Franky couldn't help but start feeling self-conscious.
"I know the others really like the Sunny, but it doesn't really scream 'Straw Hat Pirates' like these ships do for their crews." Franky said to himself. "I did a lot to make it THEIR ship, but maybe I could have done more. I wonder if I should talk to Luffy and Ussop about it later, see if they'd be interested in some other modifications to make it really scream 'Straw Hat Pirates'."
As Franky began coming up with new ideas for how to improve the Sunny's design in the back of his mind, such as maybe putting a straw hat on the figurehead or crows nest, he ended up stumbling on a particularly interesting ship that for some reason had a much of scrap metal beside it.
"Huh, this is an interesting one." Franky said as he walked closer to the ship to look closer at it. "Looks like it's a full metal construction. I can count the number of ships I've seen like that on one hand. Not even the Navy ever does that. Even the mast is metal."
Franky looked around quickly to make sure no one was going to come up to stop him from looking at the ship, but when there was no one, he walked right up to it, going right over to the gangplank and the scrap metal.
"Man, this metal work is CLEAN. Whoever did this must be a master, or have some kind of devil fruit or something." Franky muttered. "And this figurehead, it looks like a mutant dinosaur or something. It also looks like the jaw has a hinge, but I can't tell if that thing is powered or not. Then there's that brickwork, it isn't just stylized metal or wood, it's real brick. Also there's the cannon ports. This thing looks like it's ready for war. I'd actually be pretty interested in meeting the person that built this… huh?"
As Franky was admiring the ship, he suddenly felt a strange tug on the front side of his body, a feeling that began to quickly grow stronger. Around him, all the scrap metal laying around began floating upwards and in the direction of the tugging, and before long the tugging became strong enough that it pulled him into the air as well.
"What? What's going on?!"
"Damn, this place is actually pretty cool." Dive exclaimed as the crew made their way through the archipelago.
"Eh, it's kinda lame honestly. Too bright and colorful, and there's way too much sun." Wire said in response.
"You say that about everything that's not a cave painted black. Trees can be really cool, especially when you climb them." Dive shot back.
"This coming from the monkey that got kicked out of her troop." Hip snarked back. Dive growled and leapt at her, teeth bared, but Killer caught her before she could reach.
"Don't start anything you two, we want to at least find a place to eat before we start anything. We're all hungry, and we're all tired of Mosh's food, so calm down and stay that way till we get to the restaurant, otherwise you'll be on barnacle duty while we're here." Killer said sharply.
"Grrr, fine, so long as Hip keeps her monkey comments to herself." Dive said with a glare towards the other girl, and Killer slowly put her down.
Up at the front of the group, Kid rolled his eyes at his crew's antics. Normally he enjoyed their chaos, but right now he was just way too hungry to deal with it (just because Mosh had the title of cook, didn't mean he was actually good at cooking). Completely tuning out everyone but Killer and Gig (who was helping him look), Kid continued walking down the street trying to find a restaurant that could fit his whole crew, and looked like it had at least half decent grub. After a bit of walking, he noticed a pair of weirdly nicely dressed girls walking out of one, followed by a group of mildly decently dressed guys, and decided that that would be the place.
"Oi, everyone shut up." Kid called out to his crew. "I found a place for us. Everyone needs to put on their nice faces and look half decent so we don't get kicked out before they bring us our food, got it?!"
"Yes captain." His crew called back, and the group made their way into the restaurant.
The door guy let out a defeated sigh when he saw their group and told them they had to wait a minute for them to clean up, but otherwise didn't cause any problems and calmly showed them to some tables. Outside of being out of pizza for some weird reason, the restaurant was actually pretty good, and pretty quickly the whole crew was too busy chowing down to even think about causing chaos, with the exception of Mosh who was pouting about how much better the food was than his.
For once, it seemed like the Kid pirates would have a meal at some random place without causing any trouble. The whole crew was too focused on eating to even consider causing problems, but unfortunately, if the crew wasn't looking to cause trouble, then trouble would come looking for them. This was proven true as a seemingly random customer in the restaurant approached the captian's table moments after his food arrived.
"Hey, aren't you Captain Kid of the Kid pirates?" The person asked.
"Yeah, I am. Now back off, I'm eating." Kid replied without looking at them.
Suddenly a large wooden mallet came down and smashed his plate, and the table along with it. Kid then looked up to see the person talking to him was a large bulky man, and he was staring down at him with hate in his eyes.
"My wife can never eat again after what you did, so you don't deserve to eat. Don't bother apologizing, only your head splattered on my hammer can make up for what you did." The man said angrily. In response Kid simply turned to the waiter, completely ignoring the man.
"Oi, can I get another plate of cabbage rolls, and a new table to replace this broken one?"
Seeing Kid completely ignore him, the large man roared and swung his hammer, hitting Kid in the side and sending him flying out of the building.
"Stop ignoring me you pathetic coward, take your punishment like a man!" The large man shouted as he leapt out into the street behind Kid.
"I wasn't being a coward you moron." Kid replied as he got to his feet and glared at the man. "I was hungry, and I was giving you the chance to back off and let me eat before I killed you. But I guess you're eager to die huh, then I'll oblige."
With a dramatic flair, Kid thrust his arm to the side and activated his devil fruit. Seconds later the scrap metal he had by his ship came flying towards him, along with any loose pieces of metal on the path. The metal came in and began surrounding his arms, transforming his limbs into the huge metal arms and hands that he preferred to fight with.
"AHHHHH! WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON?!"
*SLAM*
In the midst of this, Kid was completely caught off guard as some blue haired weirdo in a speedo seemingly jumped face first onto one of his arms.
"What the?" Kid said in confusion as he looked at the weird newcomer.
"Grrrrr, CUT THAT OUT YOU BASTARD!" Franky yelled as he managed to throw a punch right at Kid's face.
The surprise and pain from the punch caused Kid to loose focus on his devil fruit, his arms falling apart and Franky landing back on his feet while Kid himself was sent flying back.
"What the heck was all that about you jerk!?" Franky exclaimed towards Kid. In response Kid got back up and glared at him, wiping the blood dripping from his nose off.
"I don't know what your deal is, but looks like you want a piece of me too huh? Alright then, I'll make both of you regret deciding to mess with me."
Kid then quickly flexed his devil fruit again, remaking his arms, but just like before, Franky seemed to just leap on to his metal arm face first.
"I said, CUT THAT OUT!"
Again Franky punched Kid in the face, sending him flying and making his arms fall apart again.
"What the hell are you getting pissed at me for, you're the one that's jumping face first onto my arms!" Kid exclaimed in anger as he recovered.
"No I'm not, you keep using whatever devilfruit you have to pull me on to them you bastard!" Franky yelled back just as angrily.
"My devil fruit is magnetism you moron; I can only pull metal!"
"I am half metal! Of course I'd get pulled in!"
"Why the fuck are you half metal!?"
"I'm a SUPER cyborg! That's why!"
"Stop ignoring me!" the large man screamed over Kid and Franky. "I came here to kill that entitled, evil Kid, and I'm not going to let anyone stand in my way!"
By this point the rest of Kid's crew had come out to see the commotion, most looking very excited and intrigued by the idea of Franky being a cyborg. And as much as he was trying to look like he wasn't, Kid was very much among them.
"So, you're a cyborg? Prove it." Kid said.
"I SUPER will." Franky said with a smirk.
He then turned to the man with the big mallet and raised his left hand. To everyone's shock, that hand then swung open, revealing a cannon barrel and a small scope in his palm.
"WEAPONS LEFT!" Franky shouted, and a small cannonball shot out of his arm and hit the man, blasting him away.
"HOLY CRAP, YOU ARE A CYBORG!" Kid said in shock.
"AWSOME!" Kid's crew shouted.
"Heh heh." Franky chuckled with a smirk. "I see you're impressed."
"Hell yeah I am!" Kid said excitedly. "This is awesome! Who turned you into this?"
"The SUPER man I see in the mirror, that's who." Franky replied. "I had a couple of my friends help me with the more stylish mods, but all the designs and 90% of the work was all me."
"Dude, that means he did surgery on himself." UK said in awe.
"That's totally metal, literally." Papas continued.
By this point, the other guy was all but forgotten, and everyone had calmed down enough for Franky to just walk up close to Kid, letting the pirate captain take a good look at him. Besides the speedo that had him asking certain 'logistics' questions, the very idea of which had him turning green, Franky seemed pretty cool to him. A rocking hairstyle and sunglasses, a pointed chin that had to be a byproduct of his modifications, the awesome gold chain and Hawaiian shirt, and the metal nose and shins that made it clear that he was a cyborg along with the oversized forearms. All that came together to create a pretty subdued if cool cyborg style.
"So, given your powers, I'm guessing you're the guy with the all-metal ship down in the docks?" Franky then asked.
"Yep, the Victoria Punk." Kid said proudly. "She's my pride and joy. Designed her myself even."
"That's SUPER cool." Franky said. "Actually, I'm a shipwright myself, so it'd be really cool if you'd let me take a proper look at her."
"Absolutely I could, so long as you show me more of your cyborg stuff." Kid agreed eagerly.
*GROWL*
"… After I'm done eating."
Franky ended up joining the crew for their meal, which ended up taking much longer than it would have because most of the crew were distracted by their new cyborg companion. Franky showed off to them how he's actually powered by cola and demonstrated some of his simpler modifications, and he also gave a heavily simplified version of his story of turning himself into a cyborg. No one on the Kid Pirates could get enough of their awesome new friend. The only exception to this was Killer, who was unusually warry of him.
Eventually Kid sent the crew on ahead to the ship, allowing Kid and Killer to personally walk with Franky back to the Victoria Punk, where Kid instantly switched to show off mode.
"Well, here she is, the Victoria Punk. I know you already saw her, but this beast of a girl is pretty impressive right?" Kid said with a smirk.
"She sure is." Franky agreed, rubbing a hand across the hull itself. "This metal work is SUPER clean, it's kinda unnatural actually. Did you use your devil fruit to do this?"
"Sure did." Kid said with a nod. "Got all the metal plates welded together with the help of my fruit to make sure it was as clean as possible, then bent everything into proper shape with the help of some wooden weights. Made for both an impossibly clean build, and good training for my powers."
"SUPER! Still, if you put this much work into the hull alone, I'll bet you built some pretty cool stuff into the rest of the ship." Franky said, prompting Kid to smirk even more.
"Hell yeah I did. For starters, you see the figurehead?" Kid asked, getting him a nod from Franky.
The pair then walked down the dock close to the figurehead, and Kid pointed his had out to it. Using his powers, Kid made the top jaw of the thing open up even further before slamming down hard, the teeth clamping down and crunching an imaginary boat.
"This thing can crunch and smash anything that gets in it's jaws, eating up any row boats or random shmucks that just so happen to be in the water, or even biting a big chunk out of bigger ships and causing them to sink."
"Well, that's brutal, but still cool." Franky remarked.
"Yeah, and we've got some even better stuff inside. Come check it out." Kid said, jumping onto the ship.
Franky quickly followed him, taking a proper look at the deck of the boat. It was just as steel and punkish on the inside as it was on the outside, with red walls and black floors. It was pretty obvious that the outside deck existed more out of necessity than as a place to hang out and gather though, but it was still well made. Kid began walking to one of the doors, but before he went inside, Franky had one question that was kind of bugging him.
"So, what's with the masonry?" Franky asked as he looked at the brickwork on the upper part of the ship. "Everything else is all metal, but you've got some random brickwork that looks older than the ship itself."
"That stuff is from our home island." Killer supplied. "There were a couple of old abandoned castles back home that most of us used as home bases, so when we made the ship, we decided to take some of the bricks from them and make them part of it."
"Interesting, so it's sentimental huh?" Franky said as he admired the work.
"Yeah, you got a problem with that?" Kid asked accusingly, but Franky just shook his head.
"Naw, I actually think it's a nice touch. A good ship is just as much a home to the people on board as it is transportation and defense, so it's important to have stuff like this to really make it special." Franky said thoughtfully, catching both pirates off guard, and they both had to hold back a smile at his words
"Alright, as cool as that is, why don't I show you what's really cool about this ship." Kid said as he entered a door that went into the bow of the ship.
Franky followed him through the door, and was instantly blasted with rock music. The room he'd walked into was fairly dark, mostly being lit up by a few randomly colored lights scattered throughout the room, and was very clearly a hang out lounge. A couple of couches and game tables scattered through the closer 2/3 of the room, while the back third was dominated by a stage and dance floor where some of Kid's crew had already started rocking out. Behind the stage, Franky could just barely make out another door, and there was a bar along the entire right side of the room that very clearly also doubled as the kitchen.
"Welcome to the Rock Room!" Kid said proudly over the music. "This is where we hang out most of the time when we're not going out and causing havoc. Pretty awesome right?"
"Yeah, this place is SUPER!" Franky agreed. "It's an awesome place to hang out and party. I like the lights too, though the kitchen seems a bit bare bones."
"Eh, no one on the ship knows how to cook anyways, so no point in having anything fancy." Kid said with a shrug. "Anyways, the door in the back there goes out into the jaws of the figurehead if you're curious. Next stop though, the sleeping quarters."
Kid opened a trap door a few steps away from the door the group entered the room from, and promptly jumped down, with Franky and Killer following quickly. They entered a small hallway which soon opened up into a large hall filled with hammocks, shelves, and all kinds of personal affects. All in all, outside of it being all metal and having a very soft looking carpet, it was about as basic a ship's sleeping quarters could get.
"This is where all the random shmucks that work for me sleep." Kid said. "It ain't much, but it works, and it also connects the front of the ship to the back."
"Wait, everyone sleeps down here?" Franky asked, pointedly looking at a pair of female crew-members chatting off to the side.
"Besides me and Killer, yeah." Kid replied thoughtlessly, missing the look entirely. Luckily, Killer picked up on the silent implication and pointed Franky to one side of the room where some curtains were hung up.
"We have some change rooms off to the side for people who want some privacy." He said as they walked across the room, pointing out a trap door along the way. "Down there is also a pair of bathrooms and our store area where people can go if they really want privacy."
"Good, privacy is SUPER important after all." Franky said, a bit of relief tinging his tone.
"Yeah yeah, but this is the boring stuff. Come on, let me show you something really impressive." Kid said as he quickly moved ahead.
The trio made their way to the other end of the hall where there was a door and a ladder up to a trap door. They went up the ladder, which opened up to what was clearly the cannon room, having three cannons each on the port and starboard side, and two on the back. More interestingly though, there was an intracite looking machine in the center of the room that seemed to be connecting all the cannons, holding all the cannon balls and barrels of black powder.
"This area is one of my favorites. Allow me to introduce you to War Pig!" Kid said proudly as he showed off the machine. "This baby is an-"
"Automatic cannon reloading system!" Franky interrupted excitedly as he practically ran up to the device. "You've got a small machine that compresses the gunpowder into a puck, and that puck then gets moved over to one of the cannons where it's dropped in alongside a ball, and you've even got a lighting system for quick firing."
Before Kid or Killer could get a word in, Franky quickly ran over to one of the cannons to inspect it itself, still eagerly talking.
"Each cannon has their own mount, letting a person just aim it and leave it to fire on its own, and it will even go back to where it was before on its own after reloading. And these cannons themselves, they're specially designed to be easy to fix with your devil fruit, aren't they? You load them up so that they shoot out with extra power, but rather than try and design them to last and handle it, you made it so they can just be easily fixed and replaced. You've even got a system to replace the broken cannons with a working one with just the pull of a lever. With this set up, you'd only need one person in here to work all the cannons, two if you needed more accuracy!"
"I'm guessing you're impressed?" Kid asked smugly as Franky wound down.
"SUPER impressed!" Franky replied with a smile. "While it's not the most advanced thing I've seen, it's SUPER creative and there's a lot of ingenuity put into it."
"Glad to hear it, though I'll bet with your smarts you could figure out some pretty cool upgrades." Kid said, slightly hopefully.
"Yeah, I think I could. I've already got an idea or two for ways this could improve." Franky said thoughtfully. "Some other time though, we're still not done the tour."
"Ah, right." Kid said, slightly disappointed. "Though, truth be told, the only things left are my room, Killer's room, and the war room. But yeah, let's finish this up."
As Kid said, there wasn't much left. The war room was just the planning/navigation room, and there wasn't much they really could show in it. Killer didn't want to show off his room, so they only went to Kid's room, which was admittedly pretty cool with how he decorated it. Then finally they reached their last stop, which ended up being the crow's nest.
"And here we are." Kid said as they all climbed in. "This is the last room on the tour. The look out room that let's you keep an eye on everyone down below, and sometimes people use it as a training room when they're up here."
"Just like Zoro does back on the Sunny huh." Franky said absent mindedly as he looked around the small room.
"Hold up, what does that mean?" Killer questioned.
"What does what mean?" Franky asked.
"You said something about someone training back on 'the sunny'? What do you mean by that?" Killer asked a bit more forcefully.
"Sunny is the name of the ship I'm on." Franky said with a shrug. "I was actually planning on inviting you two to check out the ship once were we're done the tour of yours. So, you want to come check it out?"
"A ship made by you? Sounds aw-"
"Captain, I need to talk to you alone." Killer suddenly interrupted and dragged Kid out of the room.
"What the heck Killer, what was that about?" Kid demanded the moment they got down to the deck.
"Captain, I know you don't read the papers, so I know you don't know who that is, but he's not just some random guy."
"Of course not, he's an awesome Cyborg shipwright." Kid replied with a roll of his eyes.
"One that just so happens to be a part of a rival pirate crew and has a bounty of 44,000,000." Killer said bluntly.
"So he's got a price on his head too, big whoop. He's cool, and that's all that matters." Kid said as he began to climb back up to the crow's nest, only for Killer to stop him with a hand on his shoulder.
"Even if he's planning on leading you into a trap?" Killer asked accusingly. "He's part of the Straw Hat Pirates, a crew that seems to have bounties on every single crew member's head, and who's captain has a bounty that is only 15,000,000 less than yours. While I don't doubt you can beat their captain, if the whole lot of them are strong enough to have bounties, we might not be able to make it out if this really is a trap."
"Back off Killer." Kid shot at his first mate, now getting annoyed with him. "I ain't so weak as to get killed by some crew calling themselves something as dumb as the 'Straw Hats'. Besides, if it really is a trap, I can just use this guy as a human shield and even turn his weapons against them. It'll be fine, so let's just go and see just how cool this guy's ship is."
Killer watched his stubborn captain climb back up to fall for what he thought was an obvious trap. Still, Killer knew that when his captain came to a decision, there was no swaying him, so he reluctantly followed.
'The name 'Kid pirates' isn't much better than 'Straw Hats' though.' Killer thought as he climbed.
A few minutes later the trio were walking down the docks to where Franky's ship was. Kid had wanted to bring the whole crew along to see what he was certain to be a really awesome ship, but Killer managed to talk him down to just the two of them, not wanting to risk the crew if his suspicions were correct. Luckily for them, the ship was only about 20 minutes away from Kid's ship, but when they actually arrived, both Kid and Killer found themselves somewhat disappointed by the ship.
"Well, there she is. The greatest ship I've ever built, the Thousand Sunny." Franky said proudly as he let Kid and Killer take it in.
"Seriously? You call that a pirate ship?" Kid asked dismissively. "That thing is way too small to be a real pirate ship, and it looks more like a ship designed for a bunch of kids."
"Is that a sunflower as the figurehead?" Killer asked equally dismissively.
"IT'S A LION YOU BLIND BASTARD!" Franky yelled at Killer. He then took a quick breath to calm down before once again smirking at them. "And don't underestimate her though. Just because she's not your style, doesn't mean she doesn't have anything to offer. This lion can roar. Come on, let me show you."
Franky then jumped up onto the ship. Kid and Killer shared a look before shrugging and following him. While their expectations had been SIGNIFICANTLY lowered, the fact remained that Franky was still a cool cyborg, so there had to at least be something cool about the ship.
Once on board, they were surprised to realize the main deck was coated in grass. Looking around, they saw that there were also a couple trees on board, one of which had a swing hanging off of it, as well as a few chairs set up. There was also a green haired man with a sheathed sword glaring at them.
"Yo Zoro, how's guarding the ship going?" Franky asked the man.
"It's fine. Nobody's woken me up from my nap till now." Zoro said without looking at him, his gaze firmly on Kid and Killer instead. "Still, I can't believe the witch forced me to stay. Anyways, who're these two?"
"Yow! These two are from another pirate crew. I met them earlier when I saw they had a SUPER ship of their own, and after they gave me a tour of it, I invited them to check out the Sunny in return."
"Alright. But if they start anything, it'll be your hide the witch'll burn." Zoro said, his glare softening but not disappearing.
"Don't worry Zoro-bro, they're just here to check the ship out." Franky said before turning back to Kid and Killer. "Come on you two, let's start the tour."
Franky then lead them up to the front of the ship, up to the helm and the figurehead. As they walked, Killer spoke up.
"Well, I'll admit the ship's deck is a lot nicer than ours, despite the cold welcome." He said.
"Aw, down worry about Zoro. He'll warm up to you, he just needs some time." Franky said as he leaned up against the figurehead with an eager look. "Now, seeing as you're a bit unimpressed so far, I figured I'd show you the most SUPER part of the Sunny first, her roar."
Franky then flipped down the stairs to the figurehead, revealing the entrance to it. Curious, Kid and Killer stepped inside to see a small room with a fancy targeting system. After looking around a bit, Kid hit one of the buttons and they heard some noise outside, and he and Killer jumped back out to see the mouth of the lion had opened up to reveal a cannon barrel.
"Huh, so the figurehead turns into a cannon. Not bad, but I don't see a reloading system for it, or any cannon balls." Kid remarked as he and Killer went back into the room.
"Heh, that's because it doesn't use cannon balls." Franky remarked as he tapped the pressure gauge in the room. "It's a beam of compressed air, one capable of blowing away buildings."
"Wait, compressed air? You didn't happen to use it about two hours ago did you?" Killer asked.
"Yup. We ran into a bit of trouble as we were pulling up, so I decided to blast them away." Franky said with a smirk. Instantly Kid and Killer became starry eyed.
"Seriously!? That thing was so strong it could be seen for miles!" Kid said excitedly.
"I know. We have to shoot another blast from the back when we shoot the Gaon Cannon just to keep it from shooting backwards like a bullet."
"Amazing." Killer said in awe. "How does this ship not crumple up when you shoot it?"
"Simple, the whole ship is made of Adam wood." Franky said casually, a twinkle in his eye.
"ADAM WOOD!?" Kid practically screamed. "Isn't that the wood that's supposed to be as hard as diamonds? That stuff costs something like 10,000 beri for just a 2/4! This whole ship is made out of it?!"
"Yup. From the mast to the keel, every single plank aboard this girl is Adam wood."
Killer didn't quite know what his captain was on about with the Adam wood, he wasn't nearly into ship building as his captain, but it was clear this was something special, and so he was more than prepared to be blown away by the rest of the ship.
From that point, Franky gave the Kid pirate pair a proper tour of the ship, showing them everything from the crow's nest to the soldier dock system (the pair particularly liked the 'Shark Submerge'), and everything in between. Throughout the tour, Killer slowly became less and less suspicious and more and more enamored with the incredible ship, falling into Franky's pace easily, and at one point even beginning to make small talk with Zoro when Franky and Kid were nerding out. Kid on the other hand was constantly jumping back and forth between being amazed and nerding out, annoyed that a ship this cool looked so bright and lame in his opinion, and jealous that this was someone else's ship. For a moment he debated on just kidnaping Franky and forcing him to upgrade his ship, but he quickly dismissed it as he knew just how bad that could turn out. Still, he was definitely going to do his best to convince Franky to give him some upgrades.
The tour only lasted about half an hour, and afterwards they all (including Zoro) decided to just hang out and chat for a bit, trading stories.
"I really wish I could have gone to Water 7 on the way here, it's always been a bit of a dream of mine to go check the place out. I was pretty disappointed when I realized the log pose wasn't going to lead us there." Kid said with a sigh.
"That's just the way the grand line works." Franky replied with a shrug. "Unless you have an eternal pose, you really don't know where you're going to end up. On the plus side, I'm pretty sure there's somewhere around here that would sell one, and if not, I've got a few spares."
"Seriously?" Kid asked, trying to hide his excitement.
"Sure, you seem like a pretty SUPER ship building fan. I'm sure Iceberg and the guys would like to meet you, so long as you make sure to not cause too much trouble."
"With a crew like ours, no promises." Killer responded.
"YOOOOO! FRANKY, ZORO!"
All of the sudden, the group heard a loud and familiar (to two of them) voice. The group turned to see the distinct appearance of the captain of the Straw Hat Pirates alongside an unfamiliar man in a bicorn hat. This moment was the first meeting between Eustace 'Captain' Kid, and Monkey D. 'Straw Hat' Luffy, and to the surprise of everyone who knew either of them, this moment really didn't go down in history.
Well, this chapter almost single handedly bumped up the rating of the story for one reason. In my mind, Kid whole heartedly fits the stereotype of swearing like a sailor. For most of his dialog I consciously had to not fill it up with swears in order for it to fit with the current rating, but I managed. Other than that though, I like to think I got his personality pretty right. He's normally pretty angry, so it feels off to write him as happy, but overall I think I did good.
Anyways, Franky and Kid is a pairing that no one saw coming from what I could tell, which honestly surprises me because this one seems pretty natural to me. Most people seemed to expect Zoro to meet up with Kid and his crew, which absolutely wouldn't work because the goal is to make them allies, and Zoro would only get into a fight with them. Meanwhile, Kid is pretty clearly the one piece equivalent of a motorcycle loving, rock out music loving punk, so it only makes sense he'd be big into ship building, which in turn would make him the perfect pairing for Franky. Killer of course would naturally follow his captain, and even he would be amazed by the idea of a cyborg, so this just kinda works.
Anyways, here is where I would normally explain the crew naming convention I used, but we actually have the names for most of his crew, so we can just skip that and I can bring this to an end. See you next time.