—
"Jay, wake up."
A flick to the ear is what wakes him up.
He grunts, feeling for the soul bond before anything else. The bond wobbles at his mental grasping. Em and Kay are near him, but there's something about their positioning that's odd.
"Open your eyes, dumbass."
And he does after confirming that the voice belongs to Em.
Of course, he's forced to squint immediately after opening his eyes due to the harsh sunlight. He turns his focus away from the scorching sun and the clear sky above him and begins to take in the scenery around him.
He's laying on a sandy beach, ocean waves lapping gently at his legs. The beach itself is small, starting wide at the ocean but gradually being funneled into a medium sized path by two large cliffs on either side leading into a forest.
He looks down at himself…he's wearing different clothes than what he last remembers being in. The most notable change being that he's not wearing a shirt, like, at all. His bare chest greets his eyes when he looks down, his skin a healthy flush from being under the sun (Was he always this muscular? He's always had some muscles but they've never been this clearly defined).
He's also got no shoes either. The dawgs are just out.
He wiggles his toes.
Yup, no shoes.
The only clothing he seems to be wearing is a worn out pair of dark gray sweatpants, and (after a cursory glance past the sweatpant's waistband) a pair of black boxers.
The third and final thing he begins to absorb about his surroundings is Em and Kay, or rather, their appearances.
It takes him all of a half second to realize that both of them look different than normal.
Em, who is sitting nearly next to him, seems to be taking her surroundings in just like him. Normally, Em's hair is dyed a dark pink with her brown roots showing (mainly because she didn't have the money to regularly dye it), but now it was fully dark pink, and, somehow, the color of her hair doesn't look like dye. He's not sure how he could tell, but it just looks…pinker. Em's clothes are also different from the tshirt and jeans he had previously seen her in. Now she's wearing black sweatpants with a white oversized t-shirt which is soaked from the ocean water, revealing the black sports bra beneath. She also doesn't have shoes.
She also seems to have gained some muscle…
The most jarring change, though, was her eye color. Gone were her honey brown eyes, in their place were unnerving and cryptic black eyes.
Kay, unlike the both of them, was walking around the small beach crouched close to the sand as though searching for something. He's wearing different clothes too, Jay notices.
Instead of the jeans and sweatshirt Jay last saw him in, he now wears a black tank top and blue sweatpants. Kay's messy black hair has moved from its usual part to completely cover Kay's eyes and along with some spontaneously gained muscle mass.
Jay shifted his eyes back to Em, locking eyes with her.
"Why do you look like a buff k-pop idol and why does Kay look like a hentai protagonist?" He asked incredulously, asking the important questions first.
"Why do you look like the delinquent antagonist from a shonen manga?" She asked back. "And how is your blonde hair…blonder? And why are your eyes black? Did you put in contacts?"
"No I didn't put in contacts, did you put in contacts? Your eyes are black too. Did you re-up on hair dye? Why is your hair pinker?" He responded, playfully swatting her hand that was reaching for his face.
She paused as she registered his words before scrambling for the ocean water to look at her reflection.
"...Okay, what the fuck." She said after searching her own face in her reflection.
"Where the fuck are we anyway?" Jay asked, looking around and ignoring Em's appearance crisis. "The last thing I remember is being at a bar, and this isn't how HQ normally drops us into different worlds."
"How would I know?" Em responded, not looking away from her reflection.
Jay grunted in response.
"Hey Kay! What are you looking for?" Jay shouted at Kay, who had moved further away from them in his search of god knows what.
"My glasses!" Kay shouted back.
"Dawg, if you haven't found them yet, I don't think they're here!" Jay yelled back.
"Then what am I supposed to do! Be blind?!"
"Yes!"
Kay groaned, shooting Jay a glare, but eventually stood up fully and began to walk over towards Jay and Em.
Jay looked up at Kay as Kay stopped directly next to where Jay was seated. Finally able to see past Kay's hentai protagonist bangs, Jay looked into Kay's eyes. Just like Em, gone were Kay's warm brown eyes and instead were the same unsettling black eyes.
"...Why are your eyes black too?" Jay said, squinting up at Kay.
"What do you mean?" Kay asked, cocking his head to the side.
"Your eyes. They're black."
"Black? No they're not, they're brown."
"No, they're black now."
"The fuck do you-"
Kay was abruptly interrupted as an impatient Jay grabbed him by the collar and forced Kay to look at his own reflection in the water.
"Read 'em and weep, you have black eyes now." Jay said, leaning forward to look at his own eyes as well. His reflection showed his own change in eye color as well. His own green eyes were nowhere to be seen, a void of black stared back at him in their place.
And Em was right, his short blonde hair did seem…blonder. Somehow.
His face also looked slightly different…more handsome (not that he wasn't handsome before mind you), but also sharper, more sinister. It was a wolf in sheep's clothing kind of look, or rather, a monster in human skin.
"Damn, I look like one of those dark fantasy isekai harem protagonists…" Kay muttered.
Jay didn't bother to stifle his snort of laughter.
"Ok team," Jay said, pulling away from his reflection, "does anyone have any idea where on god's green earth we are?"
"Fuck, I don't know, I just remember getting hammered at the bar last night, but there's no way we could've made it to an ocean from there last night. We were like 8 hours from the nearest body of water." Kay grumbled as he looked around. "Not to mention there was no warning from the system, and there was no mission prompt when we woke up."
"Does anyone remember anything after being at the bar?" Em asked, finally pulling back from her reflection.
Silence met her question as Jay and Kay shook their heads wordlessly.
Em groaned into her hands.
Jay heaved a sigh as Em cocked her head to the side. Kay looked around before opening his mouth to speak.
"Maybe we should-"
"Everyone shut the fuck up." Em said suddenly, closing her eyes as though focusing on something, Kay looking at her with a disgruntled look from the side.
After a few moments she said something again.
"Do you guys hear that?"
Jay and Kay paused before cocking their heads too.
At first there was nothing, but as Jay closed his eyes to focus on his ears, he could hear it faintly.
People talking.
Jay snapped his eyes open, meeting Kay and Em's eyes.
"""There's people nearby.""" They said together.
—
"What's with this backwards ass village?" Kay muttered as he looked around at the houses that seemed to be at the edge of whatever backwater town this was. The houses looked somewhat modern yet had odd features such as wells, cobble paths, and seemingly no technology of any kind.
"For real, there's no telephone poles, TV satellites, or anything." Jay muttered back. "Not to mention the yelling that started a few minutes ago. I can hear a bunch of people shouting at someone, but there's nobody in sight. It's all just hella weird."
"Seriously, where the fuck are we?" Em said, squinting at the surroundings like that would give her the answer faster.
As they got slightly further into the village, the shouting began to get louder, as though approaching them.
Em halted abruptly in front of them.
"There's somebody approaching…"
She squinted in the direction directly ahead of them.
"It sounds like they're sprinting towards us."
Just as she said that Jay's eyes caught something far off in front of them.
"I see them! It's a guy…he's being chased by a bunch of people holding stuff like rakes and pans…"
"See them? I can't see shi-Oh wait I see them now." Kay responded while shielding his eyes from the sun.
"Wait, what do you mean you can see them? You're not wearing your glasses, how the hell can you see anything right now?" Em asked with an obvious sense of 'what the fuck are you on about?'
Kay paused.
"That's…a good question actually."
"Shawty, we can worry about Kay's sudden and miraculous vision recovery after we figure out what the fuck is going on." Jay interrupted before any speculation about Kay's eyeballs could begin.
"Wait, that guy looks kind of familiar…"
"Why is his nose so long?"
"He kinda looks like…"
"""Usopp from One Piece?"""
The three of them exchanged looks.
"Damn, you're telling me we got isekaied into One Piece?" Jay asked incredulously. "Our asses are grasses."
"This must be Syrup Village then…" Kay muttered, looking around more as though seeing everything anew, even though he shouldn't see at all without his glasses.
"We're pretty early in the plot if Usopp is still in Syrup Village." Em said, bringing a hand up to shield her eyes from the sun.
"One Piece isn't the type of world where we would normally get sent on for a mission…" Kay trailed off.
"Oh shit, he's coming this way. Alright guys, what's our cover story? We've got about five seconds to come up with something believable." Jay warned, the strained smile on his face evidence of his rising stress.
"Our ship sank while traveling on vacation?" Kay offered.
"Shawty, do we look like we have the money for vacation? I don't even have a shirt right now." Jay's smile mixed briefly with a mocking sneer.
"Happened while we were sleeping." Em followed up. "We were in these clothes when it sank, and we didn't have time to grab anything."
"That's more like it." Jay nodded, his words speeding up. "Ok, the rest is routine: age, occupation, and family. I'm thinking 21 for age and bar bouncer for occupation."
"Bar bouncer is good." Em nodded briefly. "Requires low professional specialty skills and it's difficult to trace. Going off that I'll say waitress, and I'll stick to 21 too."
"21 works for me. For occupation…normally going along the same line I'd say bartender, but given that this isn't the modern world it's difficult to say the drinks would be the same. Hmmm…think I could get away with bar bouncer too?" Kay tilted his head thoughtfully.
"If you asked me that before coming here then no, but now…" Em trailed off pensively.
"I think yes, we'll just say we're from a small town. Should work fine since this is the East Blue, which is known for being the weakest sea."
Kay nodded in agreement.
"Let's go with that then. As for family, it's obviously…"
"""Orphan."""
"Settled." Jay nodded, his smiling easing. "One last thing, how do we know each other?"
"Childhood friends at the orphanage?" Em suggested.
"Coworkers at the same bar?" Kay added.
The three glanced at one another.
"""Both."""
Right in time for Usopp to reach them.
Or rather…for him to run right past them up into a nearby tree.
They followed him with their eyes as Usopp climbed higher and higher into the foliage.
A few seconds later, a crowd of out of breath people holding various objects like rakes and frying pans came to a stop before them, their eyes wildly searching the surrounding area.
One man in the front holding a rake managed to wheeze out a question towards them.
"Haa…Haa…Have you guys seen a scrawny teen with a long nose come running through here?" the man panted out.
Jay exchanged glances with Em and Kay, their smiles easy and practiced.
"Yeah…" Em said, drawing out her words. "He ran right past us down this path."
She pointed down the path they had come from that led to the ocean.
"Thanks!" The rake man grunted before he and the rest of the crowd ran off down the path in an exhausted manner, none of them giving the three a second glance.
"Hope you catch him!" Jay yelled mischievously at their backs, causing Em to elbow him in the side.
There was a few seconds of silence as the crowd disappeared into the forest path. A tick or two after they disappeared, the three turned their heads up to the trees above.
"They're gone, you can come down now." Kay called up to the tree, a smile eating at his lips.
There was a shuffling sound, a few rustlings of the leaves, and a branch creaking before Usopp fell from the tree tops into a crouch on the ground.
"Whew!" Usopp said, standing up and wiping (imaginary?) sweat from his brow. "You guys really saved me back there! Thanks a bunch."
"No problem." Jay replied, smiling in a way that was supposed to look relaxed, but with his new face it took on a more sinister tint.
He saw Usopp flinch slightly and look towards Em and Kay instead.
"Say, you guys look new around here! How about you let this great Captain Usopp show you around as a reward for your help?"
"Sure," Em drawled, exchanging glances with Jay and Kay, "we could use a tour."
"Well you've found the right person then! I used to give tours to the king of the East Blue and all his nobles-" Usopp began to lie casually as he began walking backwards further into the village. Unnoticed by Usopp were two kids who ran up right behind him (his "pirate crew" Jay thinks, if he remembers the story right), and Usopp continued to ramble as the kids approached with no signs of stopping. It was a collision waiting to happen.
Normally, Jay wouldn't particularly care if a character he had just met on a mission was about to make a fool of themselves, but One Piece held a special place in his heart, so sue him if he stretched out his arm to grab Usopp by his overalls and drag him forward to avoid the collision.
He can't say he's surprised when Usopp panics, though.
"Hey! What are you-" Usopp yells, fear and something else taking over his face.
This look dissipates when he hears one of the kids say "Captain Usopp! Good morning, sir!" from directly behind him when the kids had come to a halt.
Usopp whips around to face the kids as Jay lets go of his overalls.
"Your pirate crew is reporting for duty!" The other kid yelled, neither of them picking up on the sudden tension.
Seemingly realizing what just happened, Usopp whipped back to look at Jay with a stunned look.
"Careful." Jay said with a relaxed smile, an edge of teasing in his voice.
"R, Right." Ussop responded after a pause, a million thoughts flashing past his eyes, before he turns back to the kids once more.
Jay, Em, and Kay all exchange glances once more as Usopp begins to talk with the kids, the tension broken when a wail comes from the distance.
"We're doomed! Pirates are coming!" A third kid yells as he books it down the village road towards them.