Aftershock and First Major Invention

(Author Note: we are now exactly 22 years before luffy sets out and 24 years before the time skip, mc 8 years old)

The days and weeks after the execution were painted with a lot of partying and a general joyous atmosphere. Green on the other hand waited to hear the first indication that a new pirate era started. He started to read his local newspaper, as his country is big it had its own newspaper, daily to see if the coastal towns saw an uptick in pirates. It was fairly certain that his home country was safe because it was big enough that it had its own military and 4 out of the 6 coastal cities had even a marine base, Green reasons.

And as Green had predicted the number of pirate attacks rose significantly. After the first two months after the execution, everyone seemed to ignore that fact quite and it was the general consensus, what Green was able to overhear, that it was just a "little" uprising after the Pirate Kings death.

The third, fourth and fived month came and the number of attacks still continued to rise. More voices were speaking about it and more serious but it was still believed to be like a seasonal flu that would be over quickly like others before. Green overheard one of his fathers meetings with his companies heads that the attacks on his family tradingships increased by 150% over the last months.

By the ninth month nobody talked about this being over quickly. More and more reports came in about yet another pirate crew which attacked/sank/plundered another ship/town/city. The marines started to become more spread out and you were able to conclude that they were not able to keep up with the jeer number of new pirates. Everyday when Green came home from the academy he was able to see his father getting more stressed out. From what Green was told, it has been months since there has not been a big attack from pirates on one of their trading ships.

Now it was a year after the execution of Gold Roger. Nobody was talking about it being a strike against pirate morality. It was obvious that it was clearly the exact opposite. As Green remembers some already called it the dawn of a new era as the numbers of pirates were not dropping again, no they were in fact still rising. The marines were desperately trying to recruit more people, as were the military of Green's country. His youngest brother even joined the marines as an Ensign(the last commissioned officer, Tashigi was that in Loguetown).

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Green in the meantime was busy speedrunning the next educational degree. Instead of taking his first year exams he took the second year's again and with his current speed he will be able to finish with getting his degree. During his free time he experiments in the workshop of the Royal Academy to see if the Laws of Science still worked normally in this universe. It was really not a big surprise to Green that all the stuff he could replicate from the experiments of important scientists still holded up.

During those experiments Green realized that he could make certain things in this world way easier than in his previous univers with the help of Devil Fruits. Some Fruits like Caesar's Gas-Gas or even Wapol's Munch-Munch Fruit, would in the hand of the right person a lot of advancements. Green filled notebooks full of notes about things he would be able to invent with the right Devil Fruit.

This also led to the thing he wanted to do as his graduation thesis. After flipping through the newest stuff on the world, he realized that he could write around 2 dozen different new concepts from his old world which all still applied and would get a degree with the highest honor. Green was really tempted, but then decided for something that was technically already invented, just through a new means.

He is going to invent hot air balloons.

The reason for that being not in actual invention is that there are multiple similar things done with the bubbles from Sabaody Archipelago. A lot of people are trying to get the bubbles to work somewhere else but honestly everything he read about it, Green could easily say that they only work under the trees as they generate the perfect biosphere for the bubbles to survive. Growing these trees would take centuries, maybe even millennials, so the other option would be to create a gigantic artificial space where the atmosphere is shaped as on Sabaody Archipelago.

Green was really excited for the face of his examies when he was going to show them his prototype. Getting the basket was easy, just a quick order to his local manufacturer, but the burner and all the necessary gas was a bit tricky. He could not make those things by hand because firstly he was too small and secondly he did not want to learn half a dozen craftsmanship. This led to Green spending a good month with an entire workshop of different metal workers. It was frustrating to work with these people as they pretty much all thought that Green was some noble brat. It took multibile near-rage quits for Green to finally get the first fully working burner prototype.

The gas for the burner was easily ordered from a supplier for luxury restaurant ships. The actual balloon was ordered from a manufacturer who normally made big storage bags for the marines. That was also the most costly about the entire project as it had to be shipped across the entire West Blue. And he really did not want to use the materials of the original inventors as those balloons tend to start to burn up mid flight.

Green was once again thankful for his status as a young master as otherwise he would have had to convince a lot of investors to fund him.

As the months went by and Green just waited for all his orders to arrive, he finished the entire written part of his thesis. During these days he had more free time and so he started to dip into other subjects in his free time. Especially medicine and if there's actually a scientific reason why people can become physically strong enough to lift litteral tons. After having a couple of beginner problems he found that this was indeed researched heavily but even to understand the surface level of the mentioned reasons was hard for Green, as such he put medicine on his ever growing bucket list once again.

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Green was now 9 and half years old. He was currently standing in front of his real first 'Foot Print' in his new life. The location for the historical first hot air balloon rise was a big empty grass field that his father gave him for this undertaking.

Around 20 men were currently standing in a big circle. In the middle was a big basket with a metal linkage lying on his side facing inside a big deflated blue balloon with the emblem of Green's family on it. The men were all the workers from the workshop Green had the burner made. They all basically are only here to see him fail or in the little chanze, in their view, Green successeding. They all had a rob in their hand which was tied to the balloon directly. They were responsible for holding Green down. Not really trusting them he had bound the basket to an anchor point below it with another ten meter robe.

After going over his checklist again Green climbed into the basket, which was still lying sideways.

"All right! I am going to start to fill the balloon now. Get ready", Green voiced out. He looked around and saw that everybody seemed ready.

Green opened the gas valve and ignited set gas.

A 1 and half meter tall flame shot into the balloon. It burned for a good bit and the balloon material slowly started to expand(BTW: real life balloons take around 10 minutes to be fly ready). The men watched with awe that the balloon slowly started to rise. After five minutes of flame did the half inflated balloon started to right itself up from the sideways position.

Green carefully balanced on the basket as it turned.

With barely a noise did the basket turn itself horisontal. The balloon was visibly not full jet.

"Now you have to be careful and hold onto the robe as I don't want to get blown away by the wind!" Green once again reminds the men. They seemed to need that reminder as they all just oggeled the tall standing balloon.

He turned the valve open a bit more and waited. The moment was nearly unbearable for Green. Watching the balloon shell for any holes he once again increased the flame. Green feeled the basket getting pushed upwards. After a moment of uncertainty, Green was able to feel the basket losing ground and slowly lifting upwards.

The basket rose and rose, but Green only looked upwards to see if the shell was still holding. As he was not able to see anything wrong he turned the valve off and let the balloon flood.

His view went towards the men…. or better DOWN towards the men. None were actually holding tight onto their robes. Green was getting held in place by the single robe anchored into the ground.

"He actually did it…." he was able to hear a voice from down below.

He was able to hear more voices speaking in awe from the men on the ground.

"Get it together and hold onto the robes!" the first balloon rider yelled down to his men.

They seemed to realize that they originally had a task and went back, but were still staring at the balloon with wide eyes.

Green once again checked if everything was holding up. As everything seemed in order he started to begin to relax and looked around.

Despite being only 10 meters of the ground he was able to have a good view over the capital city as the grass plane he was on was already a good bit raised.

Standing inside his first major contribution to this world overlooking his homecity, Green was beginning to feel so many different emotions that it would be hard to put them all onto the page.

Green was sure about one thing that this was just the beginning for his adventure.