New World

I do not own One Piece or any other works that I may have referenced or took inspiration from. They all belong to their respective Authors.

He felt a cool feeling surrounding his body as his whole body felt weightless, like he was floating. 'Is this death?' he thought, refusing to open his eyes as he would have to accept the reality of the situation, deciding to just enjoy this floating sensation. Suddenly his body was hit by a large force from above, pushing him down. Eyes wide and gasping, his mouth instantly filled with salt water as he struggled to figure out where he was.

Swimming to the surface, he gasped once more for air, while spitting out whatever water he accidentally took in. looking around, he saw a beach nearby, and began swimming for it as fast as he could, which was not very fast at all with how weak his body felt. Luckily, he was not in a rip, or he would be sucked out into the ocean forever, and he managed to make it to the shore. Slowly dragging his body onto the sand of the beach, he gasped for air once again before collapsing onto his back, still confused about what had happened. Thinking back, his eyes filled with tears once more for his recently departed mother.

Holding his hand up to wipe his eyes, he paused. 'This is not what my hand looks like,' he thought, 'Since when was I this small'. Slowly forcing himself to sit up he stared down at his body, which was far too petite to be an adult, or even a teenager's body. It looked like he was only 7 years old, and was almost anorexic looking, a far cry from his previous 6'2 muscular physique. He had no shoes on, only a pair of pants down just past his knee, and a regular dirty tee shirt that may have once been white.

Sitting there in a daze, only one thought came to his mind that could justify this experience. 'Isekai, or other world travel' he thought, 'I watched a few anime with this premise, RE: Zero, Slime guy, and smartphone. There is no way that is possible, but what if?'

Forcing himself to his feet, he decided to have a look around see where he was. After all, he may not know where he is, how it is possible to be in a different body, or why this happened to him, but this provides him with a second chance to fulfill his dreams.

Looking up and down the beach, he realized it only goes about 100 meters in each direction, before curving towards the tree line and out of his sight. Stumbling towards the tree line to get out of the sun and get into the shade, he realized there was some fruit trees with what appeared to be apples on them. Stumbling over to them, he grabbed one of the trees and immediately bit into it, his mouth being filled with the delicious taste of a sweet apple, quenching his thirst but making his stomach rumble at the same time.

Devouring the first apple, he grabbed a second, then a third, then a fourth, then a… wait. 'This is not an apple' he thought as he stared at the small pink fruit in his hand. Looking around him, he saw red apples covering the few trees surrounding him, but in his hand was something that does not look anything like any fruit he has seen before.

The fruit was the same size as the apples, but a bright pink color. It was cylindrical in shape and had a green stem coming from the top to form a T shape. The weirdest thing though, was the strange swirls covering the entire surface of the fruit.

"A devil fruit?" Carter questioned. "Could this be real? If so, am I somehow in one piece?"

'If I am in one piece, there is no way I could survive as I am now.' Carter reasoned, 'depending on where I am, there could easily be creatures on this island capable of tearing me to shreds in an instant. To survive I need power, and with no time to train my way to it, I will need to eat this.'

Without hesitating any further, Carter readied himself for the taste and immediately bit into the fruit. It tasted rotten, and sour, yet spicy, and so cold it sent a shiver down his spine, all at the same time. Forcing himself not to throw it up, Carter swallowed it down, before immediately reaching for another apple to wash it down with.

Unknowing what his fruit could do, if he had one that is, he started moving his hands around trying to get something to happen. After waving his hands around for a few minutes, looking like a crazy person, Carter started trying to focus within himself to see if he could find a power. He doubted he would be lucky enough to get his hands on a logia fruit, so it is most likely either a random Zoan fruit or a Paramecia fruit. After standing there focusing on trying to get something to happen for five minutes, with no results, Carter got uncharacteristically annoyed and stamped his foot on the ground.

What he didn't expect was that his stomp would through him almost ten meters up into the air, before he slowly floated down.

"It's real" Carter whispered before inwardly screaming 'ITS REAL!'

'Is this the float fruit' Carter thought, before trying to turn his fruit off, finding his knees slightly bend more as weight was added back to his body. 'No, it shouldn't be. Even when the fruit was active, I still came back down to the ground, so I must not have been floating, I should have just been lighter than normal.'

'There were two characters who did similar things in the One-Piece story, that woman with the umbrella from baroque works, and that guy who was part of Doflamingo's crew.' Carter reasoned, 'the two fruits were pretty much the same, except that guy's fruit could go to much higher weights, though I don't think he could lower his weight. It must be the woman's fruit then'

He remembered one of her attacks was translated to "Ten thousand kilo press", meaning he could raise his weight to at the very least 10 thousand kilograms.

Focusing on his body the same way as before, Carter tried to slowly increase his weight. He thought 100 kilograms, and his body instantly sunk into the sand a small amount. He couldn't feel the extra weight at all, so he decided to try to move. Tilting his body forward, he tried to lift his leg, only to find that his leg was too heavy to move, as if it was glued to the ground. He started falling towards the ground headfirst before he panickily thought "1KG!", finding himself easily able to lift his leg again.

'My body isn't harmed by increased weight, but if I try to move I can't?' Carter thought, 'I guess that is why the users all float above and increase their weight, so they don't need to move at all to use the increased weight, because it would be far to difficult to move without training for a long time. I am only, what, 8? So, I have years to train to get used to this weight before I should go looking for fights. Fighting as a child would not be good after all. I just hope that the fruit doesn't stump my height growth.'

Realizing that his current state of health, i.e., anorexia is not conducive to training, Carter decided to eat a few more apples right now, as it is the only food source on hand. 'I don't know if these apples have the same caloric intake as apples from earth, but a regular apple should be about 80 calories, with not an ounce of protein. I am going to need another source of food, and soon' he thought.

He ate another 4 apples, before deciding to have a look around the surroundings to at least get a basic understanding of where he is. Lowering his weight to 1kg, he started walking along the beach until he found a high palm tree. Jumping as high as he can, he almost flew straight past the top of the tree but managed to grab it in time. He did not want to be blown by the wind out over the ocean, that would be horrible.

Looking around the island, he saw that he was on the end of a peninsula, with a mountain at the other end of the island, and a small waterfall on the side of the mountain, mysteriously continuously flowing, as if there is a large reservoir of water on top or inside of the mountain.

'It's a mystery waterfall' Carter chuckled to himself, already feeling better about his stay here.

A waterfall means flowing water, so unless there is something weird going on on this island, that waterfall means a source of clean water that can be drunk even if Carter can't get a fire going. Deciding to stay the night near the beach, Carter started gathering some sticks to help himself make a shelter. With his weight at 1kg, he was able to carry about 15kg at a time, meaning he was incredibly weak at the moment, and definitely has a long journey ahead of him.

Finding a rather large tree close to the copse of apple trees with protruding roots that could act as walls, Carter starts leaning sticks up against the base of the tree, leaving a small space for him to crawl in and out. He then went back to the mini wild orchard, to an area he had seen some orange-colored ground. Hoping it is what he is looking for, he starts poking and prodding at the ground, realizing it is indeed a clay like substance. It was currently far too hard to pull out by hand however, so he decided to test his devil fruit.

From the anime, it showed that even when that woman used ten thousand kg, she would not be injured from falling, so he decided to start slow and work his way up. Starting with 100kg, he set his weight to 1kg and slightly hopped in the air, before changing his weight to 100kg. He fell quickly from the 3-meter height he reached and hit the ground. The ground slightly cracked, but there was no other damage to either the ground or himself, so he felt confident moving to a higher weight.

Hopping again at 1kg, he went to a height of 5 meters before changing his weight to 500kg. This is by far the highest weight he has changed to so far, so he was fairly nervous about how he could handle it but found his feet easily cracking the ground with no damage to himself.

Carter gathered up pieces of the clay like substance and carried it down to the waters edge, wetting it slightly to soften it, he walked back to the tree and started using it to create slightly more solid walls to provide some extra shelter in case it rains, so that he won't immediately get soaking wet.

'Depending on where I am in the world, the weather he could go from calm and peaceful one moment to a hurricane the next, so I need to be super careful. Though the anime did show that around islands the weather was usually fairly stable, so I should be safe' He thought.

With the sun starting to go down, Carter gathered up 5 more apples, and headed to his little tree base. Putting his apples down at the entrance, Carter started to do his nightly stretches. He had been doing them for almost 2 years before he had to go to the hospital. His old body was super flexible, like a gymnast or a yogi. His new body, while quite flexible considering he was still a child, was nowhere near as flexible as he used to be, so he started with dynamic stretches to warm his body up. Then moved into static stretches for every individual part of his body. He wants to have a body with perfect flexibility yet incredible strength when he is older, so he will need to ensure that he in constantly stretching out every single part of his body, but also not making himself too loose immediately before doing heavy weights.

After he finished, Carter crawled into his new house and started eating his apples. So far on the island he had seen some birds and some insects but had not come across a single land-based animal, so tomorrow he will need to venture inland to try to find something to substitute his diet. Luckily the island is quite large, so if he is the only one on it and doesn't over hunt there should be enough food for many a year to come.

Closing his eyes for the sleep to come, he no longer felt as sad and hopeless as he did the previous day. His parents had both passed on, and what they would want for him is to continue moving forwards. He may not have his parents, but he still has his dream, and he will focus on achieving it, no matter what obstacles may come.

The next morning, Carter found himself waking up well before the sun. He could not estimate the time properly and his body clock was not set properly, so he didn't know exactly what time it was, and would only be able to tell around midday as the sun will be directly above him or would if he was in the grand line. He forgot to check yesterday the angle of the sun, whether it is north or south of him, so he will have to check during the day today.

Pulling himself out of his lean-to, Carter walked about 30 meters away to a hole he had dug the day before for waste and started his morning rituals. Finishing up, he quickly washed up in the sea, finding if more than his ankles were in the water he would lose strength, before coming back to the beach to start stretching. He did is regular pre-run stretches, before lowering his weight slightly below his current bodyweight and starting to jog down the beach.

Although he can't measure distance anymore, Carter figured that if he took about twice the steps, he used to him should run about 10km. Running in one direction down the beach, roughly counting the steps in his head he kept an eye out on what he was passing. Once he reached where he used to stop for having finished his 10km run, Carter turned around and ran back. On the way back he cancelled his devil fruit, as his legs seemed to already be used to running with that weight.

Finally arriving back at the Apple trees, Carter grabbed 3 and started eating them. Although it is not a good idea to try to only live off of apples, as they are all he has he will have to make do until he can catch an animal. After doing some more stretching, Carter decided now was as good a time as any to go looking for said animals, so he lowered his weight to 1kg, and started off inland with an apple in each hand. This was in case he got hungry, or he needed bait for a herbivore.

After float jumping through the forest for half an hour, Carter had found his first animal. A wild boar looking animal, as tall as Carter and much heavier. In regular circumstances, and 8-year-old child would easily be killed by a boar like this, but these were no regular circumstances.

'For now, I will have to make use of the same strategy as the other users of this fruit' Carter thought.

He then hopped above the boar without it realizing, pointed his feet right at the center of its back and silently increased his weight to 750kg, falling onto it from 12 meters up and landing right on its spine, instantly snapping it. Even with a broken spine it was not dead and let out a horrid screech. Carter then hopped above it again and increased his weight to land on its head this time. Although this way of hunting left a sour taste in Carters mouth, this boar would feed him for a week or so, if he was fine with slightly off tasting meat it could last a week if he wraps it in leaves and buries it.

The only problem now is how to transport it. It probably weighs about 150kg, as although it is tall it has very long legs and not a massive torso.

'I guess I could try to skin it here with the sharp rocks I found earlier' Carter pondered, 'It is quite lucky I decided to grab them on the way through'

Carter started hacking away with the rock at its skin where it damaged from Carter landing on it. With only a rock, it took him almost and hour to just hack off enough meat off its carcass to last him a week before he decided to get out of there before other predators smell it and come looking for an easy meal.

Heading to a river he saw on his journey to find the boar; he washed the two legs and the rump that he had scavenged and then started walking back to his camp. Next call of order, start a fire. Carter knew a few ways to start a fire from his father teaching him when he was young, and they went camping.

Unfortunately, he didn't have a lighter, matches, a flint and steel, or the ability to summon lightning at will, meaning he would need to use the antiquated method of rubbing sticks together to create enough friction to spark a flame.

'This is supposed to be incredibly difficult on earth, but here the laws of physics seem to be quite a bit different, so hopefully it will light up fairly quickly.' Carter reasoned.

Finding a dried-out log on the beach that appears to have been driftwood, and a straight dry stick just inside the tree line, Carter started to build a small fire pit. He then went back to the palm-tree he jumped up earlier and gathered some old dried out coconuts from beneath it as tinder for his fire.

Once done with all his preparations, Carter began to spin the straight stick-on top of driftwood. Although carter doesn't have much strength, with his weight at only 1kg, his arms only weighed about 100g together. Moving his arms for a long time at such a light weight was seemingly very simple.

After an hour of non-stop spinning the stick, and Carters body coated in a thin sheen of sweat, he finally spotted the first sign of smoke from the contact point. He hurried to place the coconut fur down in the gap, before blowing on it lightly to ensure there was enough oxygen.

Once the fur lit on fire, carter slowly moved the driftwood into the firepit, and started packing more fur around it, followed by kindling sticks, larger sticks, and finally more driftwood. Getting a decent fire going, Carter found two Y shaped sticks and stabbed them into the ground on either side of the firepit, and a long, straight, fresh cutting off a tree to run between them. He then stabbed the straight piece through some meat and placed it over the fire to cook, turning it intermittently.

Carter gathered banana like leaves from a nearby tree and wrapped the rest of the meat in it, before placing it in a 1-meter-deep pit he built inside the tree line, leaving enough for 2 days out in a shady area.

Once the meat was sufficiently cooked, Carter didn't waste even a second to tear into it, as he knew his body needed the protein it provided to fix his malnourished body. After letting the meat settle in his body for half an hour, Carter got straight into training, doing calisthenics exercises at the maximum body weight possible with his current strength. For this he was only able to use roughly three quarters of his entire body strength, but he knew he would be able to easily improve that. He did a full body set including squats, lunges, side lunges, pushups, pullups, planks, sit-ups, and leg raises. He did this because he knew that a full foundation would be required for his future.

When still on earth, he had managed to catch the anime "One Punch Man" and found the idea of the simple workout being enough to be ridiculous. Even if he did those exercises every day, with thousands of them a day his body would be misbalanced, as he would have no pulling strength because he never trains it. Saitama's push only exercised would be able to develop his, legs, and core, but his entire back would be undeveloped and variation in exercise is required to work every muscle group.

Even with his current workout regime, he was adding in variation in the exercises, as he would do use a narrow, a normal, and a wide stance for each of the exercises, as they each work slightly different muscles.

Finishing up his workout for the day, and doing another set of stretches, Carter grabbed an apple and sat down next to his tree base to think about his future. With his devil fruit, if his max weight is about ten thousand kilograms, (which he didn't quite believe), he would be able to output a massive amount of force. After seeing Luffy master soru from just seeing Blueno use it, Carter was curious about just how fast they were moving.

In an interview with the creator of One Piece, Oda, he said that Soru users move at supersonic speeds. Supersonic means they must be moving faster than sound, so at the very least they are moving at 343m/s. If Carter could move that fast, and then change his body weight to ten thousand kilograms just before he hits his enemy, he would be able to output a maximum force of around 680MN (Mega Newtons or Million Newtons), which is roughly 150 million pounds of force. With the rough size of an adult human's fist, this would create a pound/sq inch on the area of impact of 4.8 million psi.

On earth, a regular human being hit in the face with just 80 psi would be enough to kill them, if not greatly injure them, so a force sixty thousand times stronger would be able to kill a lot of people in this world. That is with the very minimum speed available via soru, but with training and lowering his weight down to just 1kg, it is very much possible that Carter will be able to reach speeds far exceeding this thresh hold.

Another thing to consider is the size of the object Carter will be hitting things with, as if he uses a spear like object, he could focus all that force into a single point, piercing almost anything. Though it will be harder to reach said speeds when holding a heavy spear. His body would also need to be insanely strong to ensure that he doesn't just obliterate himself in the collision, as that force would also be working back on himself, so he would need to train himself to at the very least Garp levels of strength before he could output that much force. Busoshoku Haki would also help to improve his chances of surviving and increase his output force by an unknown quality.

But before he can achieve any of that, he needs to focus completely on improving himself. From tomorrow onwards, he would be adding in some shadow boxing in the afternoons, to ensure that he could build up the necessary muscle memory once more.

~~1 Week Later~~

Carter had been on this island for a week now and had not ventured too far into it yet. He had managed to get all the hydration he required from the apples and from the coconuts along the beach but continuing without access to pure water would be a death sentence, so Carter knew it was time to head for the waterfall.

He had already gotten through all the meat he had gathered, so he decided to just go with only taking a couple of apples with him, as hopefully he will be able to gather up food when he arrives near the waterfall.

For the last week, he had been steadily increasing the weight of his body during his morning run and can now run the entire distance at his regular body weight, which is only about 25 kilograms. Lowering his weight to just 1kg, he was able to run for a lot farther, as his body weight was easy to move and took barely any stamina.

He started off at a very slow pace, but started picking up speed quite fast, as he didn't need to worry too much about running out of breath. The distance to the mountain he saw earlier was around 15 km in a straight line, which is mainly flat, so he didn't find the journey too difficult.

Getting close to the waterfall, Carter started slowing down as he came to a clearing at the bottom. A wide-open field filled his eyes, with a beautiful pristinely clear river running down the middle of the field. The waterfall fell from 300 meters above him creating a beautiful mist at the bottom when hitting the rocks below. A group of fruit trees with different fruits on each stood to his right.

Carter could only stand there stunned, mouth agape, at the beauty of the entire area before something else caught his eye. Off to the side of the prairie near the fruit trees, there was a small wooden shack. It looked like it was ancient, but still held strong, meaning the weather of the area must be tame. He had noticed that the weather of the area was almost always clear, meaning he must either be in one of the blues which would be a godsend, or in the calm belt, which could be a horrible situation. At the very least if he is in the calm belt people may not come by the island for a long time, so he won't be able to leave easily, but by the time his new body is 18 he should be strong enough to run across the water anyway.

Walking over to the shack, Carter called out "Hello! Anyone here?"

After waiting for thirty seconds with no response, Carter pushed on the old door, finding the hinges to be slightly rusted over and the door struggling to open. Walking inside he was met with a single roomed building, with a small kitchenette, a couch, a table, a small bookshelf with a few books in it, a closet filled with old clothing, and an old bed with a skeleton lying on it, as if it was just sleeping. Not wanting to discount the probability of it being a living skeleton, Carter called out again, "Hello, Sorry for intruding."

Getting right next to the skeleton, he reached out and shook its arm, finding it to be just a regular skeleton. Finding himself completely nonplussed about the situation, Carter decided to give the skeleton a burial outside, and take over the residence for himself for the time being.

'Why am I so nonplussed about the whole thing? There is a skeleton in a bed and I'm just going to bury him?' Carter thought, 'I guess it is already dead, there is not much reason to worry about something that has no soul and is just a group of bones.

Looking around the house, he didn't find any tools to help him dig the hole, so he walked outside to have a look around the house. At the back of the house, he found another small building attached to the back of the first building. Looking inside he found a small garden shed complete with many different tools, a shovel, a hoe, a rake, a saw, and axe, a hammer, and various other tools. Taking the shovel, Carter walked around the field until he found a large tree that reminded him of a fig tree. Finding a good spot overlooking the entire field, he decided here is where he will bury the skeleton.

Standing on the shovel, Carter increased his weight to 500kg, and the shovel sank into the hard ground like a hot knife in butter. Constantly changing his weight back and forth, Carter dug the hole for an hour and a half, until the whole was almost twice as deep as he was tall. Finding it to be deep enough, Carter went back into the house and grabbed the whole mattress, slowly dragging it out of the house with the skeleton still on it before putting the whole thing into the hole.

"This is all I can offer you; I wish you a restful sleep for the rest of your existence." Carter said out loud, before starting to fill the hole in with dirt. He had decided to throw the entire mattress out because he doubted that he would ever be able to sleep on something that someone had decomposed on top of, and there was still a couch that he could use instead.

At this time, it was already afternoon, and Carter decided to skip his other training for today, to introduce something new. When he was training to be a boxer, he found out it was important to prepare his fist for the impact against another person, because if he doesn't, he could easily break something. He did this by punching a hard punching bag, as it allowed him to slowly adapt his fists to the pain of hitting objects and improve their strength and durability.

He didn't have such a bag here, so he had to adapt his training to his situation. Walking down to the bed of the river, Carter found an area that was a sandy beach. Starting his training for the day, he knelt and started punching the ground. His devil fruit was not active, so he didn't have much weight behind his fists, but that was perfect for the situation. He needed to start slow with this training, as he needed to just slightly injure the bones in his hands so that when they heal, they will be stronger, rather than injuring them and full on breaking the bones.

He decided he would punch sand for one hour every second day, to give his bones a day of rest after every session to heal, until his full force punches no longer harm him from the sand, before moving onto harder materials, like wood, stone, and eventually metals when he can get his hands on them.

After what he believed to be an hour, Carter got up and went to the fruit trees to gather his meal for tonight. He would be skipping a meal of protein, but he should still have some left in his body from the day before, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to do so. Grabbing some oranges, peaches, a bunch of bananas, a pear, and another apple, Carter started making his way back to the cabin.

Walking inside, Carter approached the bookshelf and started looking at the spines of the books. He found a few books like "World Geography", "Encyclopedia of Animals", "Encyclopedia of Devil Fruits", "Basic Medicine and Healthcare", and "Tales of the World". All these books were written in English, so Carter found it easy to read them. He also found a completely blank leather-bound book and decided to open it up to see what it was.

"The Life and Journeys of Garlan D. Florian."

Opening the book to the first page, Carter took in the first line.

"Year 1388, Month 2, Day 12."

'Pretty sure one piece is set in year 1500 and something, so either this is a really old journal that hasn't been found in 150 years or so, or I am well before the time of the main story line' Carter thought before moving on to the next line.

"Today is the day I set out to sea for the first time. My new captain has been in the village for the last 2 days, trying to recruit me to join his new pirate crew as his first mate. Just because I am good at fighting does not mean I want to run off a fight against the marines, but the captain does not seem to be the kind to harm others, and he just wants adventure. I am writing this as a record for all of those in my hometown of Whaelrdrake, in the Norton Isles."

'So, kind of like Silvers Rayleigh then? Recruited by someone looking for a grand adventure to be the second in command.' Carter pondered. 'If this crew managed to gain anywhere near as much strength as the Roger Pirates this journal will no doubt hold countless secrets to help enhance my training progress.'

As it was already getting dark, Carter could no longer read more of the book today, but decided to spend some time reading it whenever he has free time.

'Even if Garlan D. Florian managed to make it all the way to the island of Raftel, I don't care about spoilers as it isn't really my goal to reach One Piece, so I can just skip over the mentions of it if I need to.' Carter Reasoned.

Putting the book back on the shelf for now, Carter went through one final set of stretches before lying down on the couch to sleep.