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nehswritesstuffs · 2 years

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Inherited Will, Destiny of the Age, Graveyard of Ambition and Dreams - Part 1

Also crossposted on FFN and AO3.

Forty-two years ago, the Great Pirate King, Gold Roger, was executed in front of a crowd in Logue Town. The place of his birth was raucous and electric with excitement, rage, fear, and disdain, not only for Roger, but for the government executing him as well. He spoke his final words loud and clear, daring the world to find his treasure with a laugh, kicking off the Great Age of Piracy.

Decades have passed since then. The world has fallen into the hands of monsters. A government once strong lay shattered. Tenuous treaties and fragile alliances have fallen. Despots and tyrants have taken their place, leaving the rest of the world to either pick up the scant pieces that remain, or shut themselves off for their safety.

People pray to the Sun God Nika. Their salvation shall never come; their god is dead.

This is the story about those who are left.

This is the story of the Straw Hat Pirates.

(Notes under the cut.)

Okay! So! Context! This is actually a rehabbed story that I originally began back in high school… which was fifteen years ago. For context, I originally started writing this during the Thriller Bark Saga, before Brook even joined the crew, and last updated it pre-timeskip. Ace died while I was writing the first version of this. It took such a toll on me that I just dropped this thing cold a month later, saying that I’d pick it back up again when I was up to it.

Well, I’m up to it.

Thankfully, the amount of time that has passed is enough to make me able to really take a critical look at the original version and the one that’ll be posted here. If you’ve been around enough to recall my original back on FFN, don’t worry: I’ve been able to excise a lot of what comes off now as just weird and thematically wonky. It aged very poorly. That’s okay though, as it shows how much further I’ve come since then. One can do a lot of learning in fifteen years. The original also felt very empty, in a sense, but I now know that’s also because I was literally working with only, what, a third of the series when I first laid everything out? There’s more depth now, amongst other things, despite the fact I’m keeping some beats/elements while changing others, so it won't be a complete rehash. Language will be a big part of this, as well as characters and factors we’ve learned about in-canon during the interim. This past summer (plus some) has been almost all prepwork for this, so hopefully that will show. I will also take this opportunity to say that the original actually predicted a couple really specific things I’m not proud to have predicted, but hey… sometimes you write teenage edgey garbage, and sometimes your teenage edgey garbage is a window into the future of not only your favorite series, but the state of your generation. Them’s the breaks, I guess.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

One – Romance Twilight

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

A pale, calm dawn broke on the horizon, washing the small spit of an island in its soft glow. Its solitary resident crawled out of her makeshift shelter and stretched herself awake—there was no sleeping while the sun was up. She took the straw hat from her neck and placed it upon her head as she made her way down to the beach. There was nothing she could see in the distance, so she shrugged and got to work on getting some breakfast. Before long she had a fire going and freshly-speared fish grilling—she needed to conserve the fruit on the island without knowing when someone else would get there.

When indeed; she had been stranded for a week. Without any of the tools to fix it, she glared at her broken dinghy with a disdain she wasn’t entirely certain she wanted to process at the moment. The woman threw another plank from the boat on the small fire—at least it was still good for something.

Eventually, the mouth-watering smell of grilled fish began to reach the woman’s nose. She was excited—her catch was larger than before—and it appeared as though she might actually get to eat her fill for once. One bite when they were done and it tasted as though the cay was actually heaven. She squealed in delight; at least she wasn’t going to starve any time soon, and her water barrel was far from running dry thanks to the gentle rain from the night before.

As she ate, the woman kept watch on the horizon. She was on her last piece of fish when she noticed a dark speck and stared it down. There had been many traitorous dark specks on the horizon before, though eventually, she realized that this one was the real deal. Jumping and hollering, she tried to get the craft’s attention, with it coming ever closer.

Slowly… it was headed her way on the current alone.

No one was shouting back, or visibly trying to reach shore, or visible period.

Something was very, very wrong.

“Shit,” she cursed when she realized she wasn’t being answered. She pulled a length of rope from her ruined dinghy and made a lasso, throwing it once the boat was close enough. It took a couple tries, but she was able to snag the small craft and pull it up to shore. She looked inside and grimaced: three men about her age were laying there, looking sunburnt, half-dead, and definitely worse for wear. They seemed thin and malnourished, with faded, ratty clothes that were in just as bad of shape as their frayed, ventilated sail. One even seemed to have many scars—more than her, which was an accomplishment—and another’s eyeglasses were cracked and chipped. Pulling them ashore, she put her ear to their chests to check for heartbeats—at least they were still alive.

Getting them out of the sun and beneath the trees, the woman took the water she had gathered and poured a little bit into each of her guests’ mouths. When it seemed to go down, she grabbed her spear and went to go catch more fish on the other side of the island. By the time she returned with fish in-hand, one of the men had woken up and was marveling at the fact he was still alive.

“You speak Eastern?” she asked. The sound of her voice spooked him, making him nearly jump out of his skin. He ran a hand through his black hair when he realized she had likely been his rescuer and chuckled weakly.

“Yeah, we do.”

“Then don’t move,” she advised. “You’re still kinda weak.”

“I thought we were goners,” he admitted. Then it dawned on him. “You… uh… live here…?”

“Temporarily, as of late,” she shrugged. She took her cup and filled it with water, handing it to him. “Soon as you three are better again, I’d appreciate it if you could help me get out of here considering how your boat works and all.”

“I’m sure that can be arranged.” He watched as she tossed a couple more planks on the fire and began gutting the fish. She could tell that he was watching her motions and not her, which meant that the old childhood scars on her limbs and face did not frighten him or make him nauseous. It was actually a rather novel reaction. “You cook?”

“Under better circumstances, yeah. I’m not a cook, but I won’t starve.” She looked at him and let out a chuckle. “I’m Rika.”

“I… uh… I’m Piiman; you can call me Manni. Tamanegi, Ninjin, and I were trying to reach Shells Town. Do you know how to get there?”

“Yeah… don’t.”

“We hear if someone just lays low—”

“Just trust me: don’t.” She poked at the fire and embers crackled into the air. “I just came from there.”

They stayed quiet for a while, the sounds of the ocean and fire contrasting against one another. Piiman sipped the water cautiously while he watched Rika, embarrassed that he was at this stranger’s complete mercy. His head throbbed and he felt cold—he was definitely in no position to argue much.

“Where are you headed, then?” he wondered.

“Logue Town.”

That caught his interest. “Why there?”

“…because, that’s going to be my first step to fixing this mess.”

“This mess…?”

“Yeah—don’t you remember when we were little and things were weird, but not… well… total shit?”

“Well, of course, but…”

“…but what…?”

“How do you propose on doing that? You’re one person.”

Rika grinned widely and stabbed a fish-laden stick by the fire.

“I’m gonna be King of the Pirates.”

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

It took a while for the other two castaways to wake up, but once they did, all three men bounced back from near-starvation and overexposure rather quickly as the day progressed. Ninjin seemed the largest and strongest—a quiet man of few words, as she imagined someone with as many scars to be—while Tamanegi was particularly chatty once he got going, the bespectacled man saying less than his friend in dozens as many words. Piiman appeared to be the glue that held them together, with his mediation assistance being more than necessary for one to be able to talk while the other had to take a breath.

“It’s down-right decent to be able to interact with someone who remembers and liked the world as it was before,” Tamanegi said. They were sitting around the campfire, eating some scavenged fruits before they went to sleep, for in the morning they would be setting sail for the nearest island. Rika already had a course charted and all the trio needed to do was let her steer their ship.

“It’s weird sometimes, talking to someone younger than us, and realizing what we know as wrong they think as just… normal,” she shivered. “I mean, you don’t look that much older than me, and I was nine when the Summit War happened.”

“We were ten,” Piiman supplied. He hugged his knees as he stared at the fire. “It’s hard to believe that it’ll be twenty years next year.”

“You really want to make it like before then?” Ninjin wondered. Rika nodded.

“It wasn’t perfect, I know that, but if we can get close enough, then it’s an improvement on now.”

“Plenty of things can be considered an improvement to the present day,” Tamanegi mentioned. “What makes you think that you can bring order to the world if you become Pirate King? It won’t be restarting the Government or anything like that…”

“No one has held the title since Roger, and that commands respect,” she explained. “I can put my foot down and get the East Blue Bosses in line, open up places like Wano and Dressrosa, connect people from Germa to Briss…”

“I didn’t think places like that were common knowledge anymore,” Tamanegi frowned. “The movement of such information is restricted.”

“She’s not an idiot, Tam,” Piiman groaned. “Most people can learn about those places, even if it’s just stuff from old books, or stories from old neighbors. We all still had school when the Summit War happened.”

“How did you know, if you are aware that is difficult information to come across?” Rika asked. The men glanced amongst one another and shrugged.

“Our island was on an information lockdown for a lot of years—nothing in, nothing out—but I was able to find things out through discarded newspapers and overheard conversations that the bosses had with visitors,” Tamanegi said. “It’s bad when it’s accurate to say that the Grand Line is potentially less of a mess.”

“You’re pretty strong though,” Ninjin noted. “You came from Shells Town. No one comes from Shells Town.”

“I saw an opportunity and took it; I’m just lucky,” she shrugged. “You three are pretty much the same in that regard, aren’t you?”

“In a way,” Piiman admitted. He took a bite of the fruit he was holding and smiled at it. “This stuff is the best we’ve tasted in a long time.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Rika nodded. She then grinned. “I know I’m a one-woman-act right now, but would you three like to join my crew?”

“…and become pirates…?!” Tamanegi’s eyes bugged, absolutely mind-boggled. “Pirates were what ruined our lives to begin with!”

“The Captain didn’t,” Ninjin replied simply.

“Yeah—he was all about living free and doing what was right, even if he lied a lot,” Piiman said, voice soft. Tamanegi relaxed and took off his glasses to wipe tears from his eyes.

“When we were little, there was an older boy in the village… we looked up to him,” he explained. “He’s… well… even one of the best pirates in the world can’t handle a bunch of enemies at once.”

“I looked up to someone too,” Rika said. “He ended up kicking the spoiled wolf that was the pet of a high-ranking military man’s son. I didn’t know him for very long, but he did that for me after the wolf attacked me… and…” She gestured to the hat upon her head. “This used to belong to him—it blew my way right before he was executed as an example.”

“Morgan…?” Tamanegi asked. Rika nodded.

“He’s dead now, so I saw the opportunity while there was a power vacuum and bolted.” She saw the men grow tense—they knew the name well enough.

“Morgan is dead?!” Tamanegi marveled. “How?!”

“In front of the whole town, the Axe-Hand turned towards the wrong throat,” she said. “That was months ago… the end of last year, actually, if I’ve kept time right.”

“We’ve been kinda drifting for about that long,” Piiman said. “We’ve been surviving on others’ leftovers on the varying islands and sandbars that we come across.”

“Then let’s stop surviving and live instead,” Rika grinned. “You can be the first three recruits to the Straw Hat Pirates.”

“More like a founding member of the Straw Hat Pirates,” Tamanegi said, rolling his eyes. “You can’t be a crew of one.”

“You can… it just doesn’t work very well.” Rika held out her hand, palm down. “What do you say?”

“Can’t be worse than before,” Ninjin shrugged, placing his hand atop hers. Hesitantly, Piiman put his hand on Ninjin’s, and then all three looked at Tamanegi.

“What…?”

“It won’t work unless you do it too,” Ninjin frowned. “Come on.”

“Fine…” He placed his hand atop of the pile and Rika’s grin grew wide.

“From this day on, we are the Straw Hat Pirates—we are the ones who are going to fix this age into something more livable, for us and all the ones after us! There is nothing that will stop us from being the best force to hit these seas in nearly fifty years!”

“You’re definitely going to need someone to write this stupidity down if anyone’s going to believe you in the future,” Tamanegi deadpanned. Rika just laughed.

“Shishishi—says one of the guys named after vegetables—if we don’t do it, then who will?” Everyone took their hands back and Rika threw another piece of wood on the fire. “Soon as you three are able, we can set out.”

“Tomorrow,” Tamanegi decided wearily. “If we don’t set out, the harder it will be when we do, and then we’ll run out of provisions here… or worse… get caught by someone who’d rather us not be out wandering on our own.”

“It’s decided, then!” Rika said. She stood and placed her hands on her hips triumphantly. “In the morning, we’ll head on over to the nearest island chain and get more provisions so we can make it to Logue Town and the Grand Line!” She pointed off in the distance, signaling where it was they were headed. “I already have the course—we just have to get on the right current!”

“...like how you found yourself here?” Piiman smirked. Rika pouted in response.

“Listen: I got caught in a storm. That’s why my boat’s wrecked and how come it didn’t wreck anywhere near people. It’s not like you three were able to do much better.”

Only Ninjin snickered at that.

“Look out, six seas!” she said smugly. “We might be late to start, but you will be ours!”

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

A/N: Since I'm writing in English and we start in the East Blue, the "default" is going to be "English = Eastern". We're gonna have a punctuation nightmare from here on out in order to differentiate between all the meta-translated dialogue, so I'll keep y'all abreast of what's going on with that front.

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