Alright, time to update this story. I need something to get my mind off of MHA for a while, writing for the same universe, even mixed with another, gets old after a while. Don't want to burn myself out. Now, where last we left our unfortunate isekai victim, he had just realized that canon may be well and truly screwed.
Let's see how he reacts to this, shall we?
'Fuck it. It's too late to undo what has been done, all I can do now is roll with the changes and try to do damage control so that Luffy and Zoro don't just die by getting lost at sea.' These were my last thoughts before jumping onto the ship provided by Tony. An inpatient Nami was already there, tapping her foot.
"Finally, let's get going. I have better things to do than navigate for random schumcks with too much money for their own good." She said while preparing the sail and taking control of the steering mechanism. "Also, you owe me an extra 10% fee of whatever you paid to charter this ship." She finished with a wink and a smile, that to anyone else would have resulted in emotional whiplash. Looks like she already grew tired of her hardline, cold persona and morphed into her more natural bubbly, greedy self.
"That's fine, you're doing me a big service after all. And it's not like I care much about money." The shine in her eye grew. "Though maybe I can pay you in another way, am I right to assume that you're the type of girl that likes a good treasure hunt?" Ok, so anime effects are a apparently a thing. Because I could swear I saw Belly symbols in her pupils.
"You're damn right I am. Now spill, depending on how good the treasure is I might agree to take it in place of payment. If you help me, that is." Gotta love greedy characters, they are ridiculously easy to influence if you knew how to dangle a prize in front of their face.
"Hmm, does a map to Paradise sound good enough for you?" I intentionally used that name knowing that Nami wouldn't know of it, adding to my credentials as a knowledgeable stranger. "The first half of the grand line." I added after she raised an eyebrow in confusion.
"Who the hell calls the pirate graveyard paradise?!" She exclaims, though clearly, I got her attention.
"The people that experienced the second half, the New World, and grew nostalgic over how comparatively easy the first half was. I'm guessing that you've never been outside of the East Blue, have you Nami?" She starts sweating, probably coming to the conclusion that I had in fact traveled out of the East Blue. At least enough to have the knowledge that I did.
Her threat rating for me probably went up several notches.
"It's not a problem, even after just a few minutes of sailing I can already tell that you're an extremely talented navigator. I'm sure that if you had even a decent ship and maybe some protection you could survive Paradise easily enough…Well, unless you go in completely blind." I lay it on pretty thick.
"I get it, I get it. I shouldn't enter the grand line without some help. Preferably from someone strong enough and knowledgeable enough to survive it. Still, you look pretty stringy, no offense. I doubt you're that strong, even if you clearly have knowledge." I laugh at her completely true statement.
"Yup, if you want to enter the grand line. And survive longer than a few minutes. You'll need me, and a few powerhouses. Lucky for you, I happen to know where the strongest people in East Blue currently are. Also luckily, they should be in the same place as our little treasure map. Tell me, have you ever heard of Orange Town?" Yup, I was going to salvage whatever bit of canon I can. Which means that I have to find a way for us to meet up with Luffy and Zoro.
"I have, is that where it is? And what do you mean by the strongest people in the East? Got any names or are you going to keep it vague?" She was fishing for information, which I was more than happy to give. It didn't cost me anything after all, and laying it all out early would only benefit me later.
"The three strongest individuals currently living within the East Blue are, in order of strength: Captain Smoker of the Navy. Monkey D. Luffy, a new pirate with a devil fruit. And Roanoa Zoro, the bounty hunter and an expert swordsman, even by Paradise standards. The latter two are in, or on their way to Orange Town, while the former is in Loguetown." She flinched at the information that the second strongest person in these blues was another pirate.
"W-what about Arlong, he was from the grand line, so does he not count? Or…Are all of these people stronger than him?" A hint of hope was in her voice, but also fear.
"Arlong was a failure in the grand line. A weakling compared to most of the bigger fish in that ocean. Pun intended. Any of these three could defeat him and the rest of his crew on their own. Though Zoro would probably finish that exchange very close to death." She grew pale.
"Don't worry though. Smoker is tough, but kind to civilians. He's one of the few non-corrupt military men and takes his job very seriously. Luffy is a goofball, almost childlike. He's strong but innocent and doesn't hurt others without a reason, he's not your typical pirate. Finally Zoro, he's the honorable type, doesn't harm others unless they are in the way of his goals. And even then, he rarely kills anyone that isn't his target." With each word, Nami lost her fear, though it was quickly replaced by distrust and skepticism.
"And how exactly do you know all of this? It's one thing to travel the world and learn about places like the grand line. But how do you know about the powerhouses of this ocean, or about where they are at this time? You're hiding something from me, spill it!" Oh boy, now she was angry. I had to make this sound convincing.
"There are many mysterious powers in this world, beyond just those of devil fruits. Some are powers that anyone can learn, or just require special training, like what the Navy and New World pirates have." Another nugget of information for later. "And some are powers gained at random or from birth. I have the latter." Turning towards Nami, I make eye contact to emphasize that I was not lying.
And I wasn't, minus the special power thing. I just wasn't about to spill everything.
"My power is that of clairvoyance. I have access to information that nobody rightfully should. Broad information like what I've said so far, but also personal information. Information of the past. And information of what can happen in the future, should I choose not to act against it." I could practically hear the ominous music that would have been used were this still a show. Nami's visible gulp helped solidify that what I said got through to her.
"And some of that information is rather dangerous. Even just knowing about it and letting it slip could get you killed. So forgive me if I'm not forthcoming with some things if I don't think you are ready for them. Just know that I'm not your enemy and that we can both benefit from working together!" I finished with a close-eyed smile. Paying her back a bit for her initial cold treatment and switching to a bubbly personality.
Something she seemed to realize as she giggled right after. "Sure, I guess I'll just have to believe that for now. Alright, Orange Town it is, it should only be a few days' travel. With all the provisions that you bought, we should have more than enough to reach it and then head towards Loguetown. Did you plan this out all this time?" She questioned, and for once, I could be perfectly honest with her.
"Nah, I just planned on going to Loguetown at first, and I wanted to make sure that we had enough provisions to last us several times over. But now that we have a plan going and recruits to take in, it definitely won't be enough to last the whole journey. We'll have to restock at Orange Town or on our next stop before continuing. Speaking of provisions, here, take one." I tossed her a spool of fishing line and some hooks.
"We'll need plenty of meat for our future traveling companions. Fish should do just fine, so we should get to fishing while we have the time. There's plenty of salt, butter, and oil in our supplies too, so we can preserve them for the long haul. Besides, other than basic exercise, there won't be much else to do on our way there." Nami nods and accepts the logic of the idea. And as expected, a person living in this world was more than familiar with fishing, even with relatively primitive equipment.
I was significantly less experienced. But hey, it wasn't rocket science, I pulled my weight.
Two days and many kilograms of fish later
"What happened to this place? Some kind of invasion? Pirates?" Nami asked as we drifted closer to Orange Town's island. The scent of smoke and the silhouettes of broken buildings greeted us as we approached. Thankfully, it was just the silhouettes, I had made it clear that we'd be better off arriving at twilight while visibility was lower, but still enough for us to see.
"The latter. The clown pirate Buggy attacked this place. He's a grand line failure who decided to stick around East Blue to bully the relatively weak people here. He's a massive coward with an even bigger ego, if we get unlucky and cross his path, just let me do the talking." Nami nodded, now a bit more confident knowing that my bullshit foresight could probably get us out of trouble if needed.
"He's also the one with the map, so we'll either have to wait until Luffy and Zoro make it here. Or we could try to take their crew down ourselves…Oh don't look at me like that, they're a bunch of weaklings and bullies. Only three of them are any real threat, and they each have big weaknesses that we can exploit." More exactly, none of them were bulletproof or could deflect bullets.
Truly, the biggest threat is that lion dude. Most weapons would probably bounce off the lion's hide unless there was a lot of strength behind them. We'd need Zoro or Luffy to deal with that thing. Though with any luck, the lion would be fast asleep by now. They sleep for the majority of the day after all.
"Let's not. I'd rather not get our hands dirty if we're just going to have a couple of strong guys come along who could do the work for us. It's not like there's much to worry about-" The wind suddenly burst out with enough force to knock Nami off her feet, followed by a flash of light and a shockwave that could probably be felt across the entire island.
A buggy bomb had been fired.
"Sure, we could do that. But we risk a fairly high chance of getting caught in one of those. My abilities aren't perfect, for all I know, we could be here entire days too early. At the very least, we should try to sabotage that cannon. For the town and our own safety." They needed to be tactical about this though. Hit them while they are tired from the day, and probably drunk too.
We would have to attack at night and find proper weapons. And there lay the problem. The only weapons in this town were likely taken by Buggy.
"We'll need to follow the carnage back to where it came from. I doubt that they'll shoot the same section of the town twice. Still, just to be sure, let's stay on the outskirts of the damaged area." The smoke and debris would also hide our scent. An important detail when one of the greatest threats on this island was a big cat with an equally powerful nose.
"I still don't think this is a good idea, I don't want to let these pirates destroy what's left of this town, but you can't expect just the two of us to take them down ourselves." Nami had a point, of course, defeating Buggy's crew was beyond us. But that wasn't the only way to stop their destructive streak.
"We won't be fighting the clown crew head-on. Hell, I don't even plan on fighting them at all, if we can manage it. I just want to take out their captain Buggy, and maybe sabotage that damn cannon of theirs. Without him, they'll be without direction, and the explosives they use are too dangerous to leave operational, after that, we can hide out and wait until Luffy and Zoro arrive." Nami goes silent, thinking things through.
I appreciated having another mind to bounce ideas off of. Especially the supposed 3rd smartest person from East Blue, just behind Ben Beckman and Kuro…And I severely doubted the latter's intelligence.
"For now, we need to take inventory of what we've got to work with." Unfortunately, I didn't have much to contribute. It's not like I could just buy weapons from Cocoyashi, and I didn't think I had the time or charisma to convince Genzo to give him one of his weapons.
"...What's with this sphere, it looks like a globe, but that can't be right. And it has all of these markings in a language that I've never seen." I thought this would happen eventually. I took a moment to think up a response while Nami played around with the globe, an intense look in her eye.
"My perception ability extends beyond this world, what you're holding is a true world map from another planet. One with considerably more landmass and a much different history and even logic compared to this one." I'd rather that she didn't know it was specifically my world. Maybe that would change in the future, but not now.
"A world map…We're going to talk about this more later, I'll just say that now. After we're no longer in danger of getting blown up by some crazy clown pirate." She reacted better than I expected. "We don't seem to have anything that could be useful, can you at least tell me what kind of resistance we'll be fighting against?"
Right, I should have done that sooner. "Alright, first off is their captain. He can-"
About two hours of travel and scavenging later
We had made it to Buggy's camp and were hiding in a nearby abandoned building. And luckily, the pirates hadn't completely cleared the place, so now we had some equipment to work with. Nothing too special, some rope, a few kitchen knives, but that was better than nothing.
Well, there was one great find that would come in handy if everything went well, a wooden keg that looked like it could hold about thirty liters of water with a little extra space to spare. It was the perfect size for the job. 'Now if only it wasn't so heavy.' Damn thing nearly weighed 30 kilos. It would be a pain to lug around while we worked.
Oh well, it was a good reminder that I should try to pump some iron while I was stuck in this world. Strength and endurance were crucial to survival, even if I couldn't gain strength as quickly as the humans from this world. 'Or can I?' A question for later.
"I can't believe I'm going along with this idea. Do you really think they'll be asleep or drunk enough for us to just waltz in and…What, slit their throats before dealing with Buggy?" There was a pause. "Wait, is murder on the table? Because pirates or not I don't know how I feel about killing some defenseless schmucks in their sleep."
"I won't lie to you, I have a very low opinion of these particular pirates. They're just about two or three degrees from the bottom of the barrel. And if killing a bunch of wanton murderers and marauders makes it safer for the two of us, I couldn't care less." Sure, I kinda sorta liked Buggy for the comic relief character that he was from the story. But that was in fiction.
This Buggy was flesh and blood, and he was a cold-blooded mass murderer and psychopath. The same went for his crew, I wouldn't lose sleep over their deaths. "Just leave the dirty work to me if you don't feel that you're up for it. I understand." Frankly, if I were in any other situation or if my target was any other group of people, I'd feel the same.
"Besides, It's not like I'm going to go out of my way to kill them. If things go well, we'll only have two bodies to deal with. Maybe three. Any deaths that happen after that are the results of idiots who decide to sleep next to a hungry lion." Buggy, Cabaki, and Mohji. After those were taken care of, Richie would probably take a few more with it after finding its master dead.
"Alright, no more talking from this point forward. And watch your feet, I wouldn't be surprised if there was glass everywhere." This needed to be perfect, otherwise, we'd be stuck in the middle of enemy territory. Our only saving grace being that the clown pirates were drunk out of their minds from an entire day and night of partying.
'Hmm, It might have been a good idea to cover us in alcohol to mask our scent, but it's too late for that now…Here he is, I need to make this perfect.' I thought as I stepped right next to the Mr. Satan of this reality, large knife in hand. Alongside me was Nami a cloth rag ready, our keg of water open. I made eye contact with Nami and nodded.
As quickly and completely as she could, she covered Buggy's mouth and nose, immediately waking him up but preventing any noise. I swung the knife down, Buggy's fruit activating on its own, cleanly separating his head from his body. The moment that happened, Nami dunked it into the keg and sealed the lid. Buggy's body went limp soon after.
We did it! Our anxiety-ridden bodies were still shaking, but we did it. And to my surprise, not a single Buggy pirate was woken up from their drunken slumber. Maybe they could get out of this without shedding a drop of blood?...'Fuck I hope I didn't just jinx it.' Unfortunately, the author was listening to my thoughts.
"Ugh Reggie, go back to slee-!" As quickly as I could, I lunged at the freshly awoken Mohji, stabbing my knife directly into his throat and covering his mouth as I did so. Unfortunately, I still made too much noise, and more pirates were groggily waking up now… I threw the knife at Reggie the lion. "Bolt it Nami!" It was time to cut our losses and run for the hills. Let the pissed-off lion handle the drunkards.
"Keep running and don't stop until you drop Nami! We need to get some distance away from the mess we left behind, we can try to come back and take their treasure and map later." Though saying that, I made a mental note that we should have paced ourselves instead of going for a dead sprint the whole way.
"No shit Sherlock! You better hope that none of those guys know how to control that lion, because now they'll be out for blood, and you still have some covering your hands…Wait, did you say treasure and a map?!" Classic, even after such a serious situation she still pays more attention to the possibility of treasure over anything else.
"If I remember right, it's about ten million Belly alongside the map. Plus Buggy here is worth fifteen million dead or alive." …Forget pupils, Nami's eyes had completely morphed into Belly signs, and I could see that she was tempted to double back to get that treasure at this very moment. Though the danger and the fact that she held over half of their score on her back helped dull that impulse.
About two minutes out and the adrenaline rush had ended, and with it, my legs collapsed. Burning from maintaining a sprint for that long. While Nami merely slowed down and began breathing and sweating heavily. Damn, I needed to get into shape fast if one of the weaker straw hats was this physically fit from the start.
It took a solid five minutes for me to regain enough control to walk. Way too much time, but thankfully, Nami had moved me to a nearby building so that we could rest properly and out of sight. "Ok, that could have gone better. But it could have also gone way worse, good work Nami. And thanks for the assist."
*Bllrkk
Right, she was probably still processing the recent murder. Honestly, I was surprised that I wasn't joining her…Best not to think about it, lest I go down a dark mental road. I'll just chalk it up to my self-preservation instinct being stronger than my morality and keep it at that.
"O-Ok, ok. I think I'm good. That…I always planned on killing Arlong, I thought I'd be fine with seeing death, at least from a pirate. But…Is it because it was a human?" Wow, she was taking this pretty hard. I guess I should at least try to weigh in on that.
"Reality is often different from what we imagine. Especially when it comes to taking a life, everyone handles it differently. The fact that you're this shaken up by the death of some scumbag just goes to show that you're probably a better person than I am." I was willing to accept that possibility, greed aside, Nami always had a heart of gold deep down.
"As for the human thing, I doubt it. Trauma aside, I'm sure that you're aware that fishmen aren't that much different from humans. They can be just as petty, pathetic, humorous, and anything else as a human can. They're people, with all the flaws and virtues that come with that title. You just happened to meet some of their scumbags." Admittedly with a pretty damn good reason for hating humans, it was just that the targets of their anger were wrong.
Now if they took that aggression and righteous hatred out on the tenryuubito? Then they'd deserve a damn medal.
"...Sure, let's go with that. I'm just gonna push that to the back of my mind and focus on the tons and tons of money that's waiting for me when all this is done." Fair. "For now, you should get some rest. One of us needs to be awake just in case those two people you mentioned, Zoro and Luffy right?" I nodded in confirmation. "Until they arrive. And to be honest, I don't think I'll like what I find if I fall asleep right now." Also fair.
"Good idea, and thanks. I could use a proper rest, and while I don't like the idea of using someone else's bed without permission, I don't think they'll mind. Wake me up in an hour or two please, I don't want to stay in one location for too long. And definitely not until sunrise." I said before heading upstairs to where the bedroom was.
Hopefully, tomorrow will herald the arrival of the next pirate king. But that raised another question. But do I want to try and join his crew outright? Or should I just tag along as a guest?
The readers of this little tale can decide that amongst themselves. Honestly, I could go either way myself. There are benefits to both options and a myriad of possible outcomes that can branch out of them. Well, no matter which one people choose, I hope that you all enjoyed the chapter. See you next time.
