New Lives

'Ugh… my head hurts.' Karma rose from his sitting position, what he felt underneath was bizarre. '...Sand?' Finally, his mind had caught up from the events prior. 'Where the hell am I?!'

A cloth of black swayed from his peripherals, Karma's eyes wandered the area and his hands glided over his new apparel. 'Ok, new clothes, different place, different time, and I don't smell the fumes of my twice reheated slice of pizza.'

Either he was going crazy or what he thought was just a figment of reality-bending magic. 'Relax, panicking won't do you any good, Karma. I might be hallucinating if I told myself that I've been isekaid.'

One big punch to his own stomach confirmed everything. "Oof!" Karma wanted to keel over. 'Argh… I didn't even punch that hard.' Straightening himself up, he walks around the island, dazed and confused.

It was moderately sized, a large cliff was observable, the beach stretched for a few kilometres and as you go inland, forests of the more jungle-looking type were thickening.

'I'm in the middle of nowhere. Speaking of that, I'm sure I wasn't this tall, did I get changed into someone else?' Karma had his inner gears of thought turning before trying to confirm his idea by staring into the water.

"Yep." Karma didn't need to say anymore. It wasn't him, he certainly didn't have any kind of auburn hair nor did he have it styled into a short ponytail. 'It seems that I have been indeed transported to another world.'

Despite not recognizing his own facial features, which were pretty average, his outfit was very memorable to him, it was the Reapers set but the coat had sleeves that reached to his gloved hands.

'I suppose the mask is not to be found but does still have the hood. I wonder if this is what happened to my friends-'

"Gyaaaahhhhh!" A girly scream came, it was from the other side of the island. Karma snapped a look in its direction and started running, not delaying anything because it certainly felt like they were alive still.

'That must be Krys, how can someone scream that loudly? I need to use the shore, heading inland with no direction is gonna be a recipe for getting lost.'

When he did reach where the source was, Karma saw a girl that was not Krys' actual appearance. "Looks like you got changed too, it's me, Karma. Why did you scream?"

The girl, much shorter than him, maybe about 4'10 was on the ground having a huge scowl and a balled-up fist with sand dusting her arms. Also, the most obvious fact was that the girl wasn't a human.

"Woah, you got cat ears?" Karma shouted, seeing the girl turn to him. She had light orange hair that reached just above the shoulders and matching hues on her eyes, oddly she was wearing a school uniform of all things, a sailor one, much like what Karma would expect in an anime.

"Karma!" She yelled. "I'm a fucking girl!"

"Well… of course you are?"

"I'm not supposed to be a girl you idiot! It's me, Xed!"

Karma freezes, he had to blink exactly a total of 10 times before he tried rubbing them with his leather-gloved hand and staring at his supposedly now female friend.

"You… Hahahahaha!"

"Stop laughing, how am I supposed to get a girlfriend now when I'm both a girl and a furry too?! What kind of sick joke is this for making me female?! And how about you?! You look normal!"

Karma chortles and starts choking while a further angry cat-girl(?) was punching the ground in frustration. "It looks like we've been isekaid. We need to find the others, I have a sneaking suspicion that accepting that voyage may not have been the best idea."

"…Why, o why?"

Xed was devastated, he was now a woman and maybe it would be best to leave him alone. To which Karma obliged. "Stay here along the shore if you're gonna sulk. I'm gonna try finding the others."

Karma left the crying Xed and walked along the edge of the shore and started screaming at the top of his lungs. "Larc! Krys! Where are you!" He repeated this for minutes as he passed by various forms of flora until someone called back to him.

"Karma! We're here!" That sounded like a man, so Karma assumed it was Larc but at this point, anything could change so he had to do an educated guess at best.

Following the voices, Karma came upon two people that was more recognizable than ever. "Holy crap, you're Gordon Freeman."

"I know right? I don't have armour, only a hoodie and jeans but I found myself wearing glasses and took a look at my reflection. Also, I think Krys got the best out of us." He said, pointing his thumb to the person leaning on a nearby tree.

"I'm Yelan now apparently, just the appearance," Krys said moving from the tree and crossing her arms. "Have you seen where Xed is yet?"

"Pft!" Karma stifled a laugh as the other two looked at each other in perplexity. "Ok, so before we go... just keep an open mind before anything, 'kay?"

"What's wrong with him?" Larc asked.

Karma smiled. "You'll see."

Moments later...

"Bwahahahaha! You're a cute cat girl... with a tail too! Bro, I prefer you to be like this, no homo. You don't have that fatass character model you had before, man if there was a God I'd be praising hallelujah from now on."

"Please shut up."

"I would've... haha!... never thought that someone who dunks on furries would become one. This is just vengeance for all those times you keep spamming me with weird shit."

"Now, now!" Karma announced, clapping his hands as the two stop their arguing. "We need to look around, worst case scenario we have no food around here but the best one would be to find out what's going on."

"Hold on, I'll try looking at my map." Xed then had paper appear behind his back when he reached for nothing.

"..."

"Did you just pull a map out of nowhere?" Karma pointed to the piece of parchment Xed was carrying and unfurling across his hands.

"Huh? Oh... I just thought we were in Sea of Thieves, I just had muscle memory to do it." Practically, it was the most stupid answer ever, but they were used to Xed's less-than-stellar way of explaining things.

"I don't even want to know how you end up thinking this is still Sea of Thieves."

"Duh, this is obviously a dream and I need to play along until I can wake up from this nightmare. I still have to do some stuff to enrol in college."

"Stand still for a moment."

"What are you-"

Karma winded up a punch and directly slammed his knuckle toward the little girl's face, sending Xed flying to the ground and the map disappearing from his arms. "Oops, I didn't mean to punch that hard."

"Ouch! What the hell are you doing?!" Xed stood up, his ears clearly in an angered manner as he stood up with pain from everywhere. "That really fucking hurt!"

"Do you see what I mean? Also, I punched you in the face, how is it that you don't have a broken nose when I sent you that far?"

"I don't know!"

Tending to the situation, Karma looked around to see the lack of one of his friends. "Where did Krys go?" he asked Larc.

"She said she'll try searching more of the shore, there might also be something in the island itself. We'd be lost if we try going inland, but I guess that fixed itself."

"But a map wouldn't mean we'd... wait! The voyage!" Karma turns his head to Xed. "Is that why you pulled out a map just on muscle memory?"

"Well, that's what we accepted didn't we?" Xed shrugged as if it was obvious. "Here." he pulled out the same map in the same manner and flipped it over. "There's an X on top of the cliff over there."

"We don't know if it's the same island."

"Is there anything else we can do?"

"No."

"Exactly, let's head up there."

Just as the three were set to go to where X marked the spot, Krys came back lightly panting and pointing in the direction where she came from. "Guys!"

"Krys? Did you find something?" Karma asked.

"It's our ship!"

"What?!"

A few minutes of walking later...

The black sails were filled with symbols, the charred hull and the ever-so-present flame still burning. Truly, their ship was back, joining them from their adventures, reborn as another formidable galleon.

"It really is!" Karma yelled in joy. "She's back and in black! We have a shroud of flame around it too!"

"What the hell is going on," Larc questioned, his eyes sagging from the questionable amount of things going on, he wasn't disappointed or anything, just bewildered.

"I think I might know, Krys accepted that voyage and now we're in a completely different place and inside different characters. That voyage name is an indicator too, a treasure beyond the sea of thieves."

"Huh... so everything is real... cool."

Karma chuckled. "Since you're all relaxed about this why don't we do another adventure?"

Krys had to stop the direction where their priorities mattered. "Are you really saying that this is all just acceptable? We are dragged from our desks and got into new bodies and islands, possibly missing in our world now and our past lives gone. This is real life, we might die."

"..."

"So?" Karma shrugged.

"What?"

"Hear me out, do you really think studying to death and hoping for a time-consuming job designed to wring us out of our lives was the best way to spend our time? Raise your hand if you'd rather have this kind of experience than whatever we did before."

Each of them stared at the other, sure death was an ever-present threat but when was death ever not a threat? A car crash is just as likely, death from a heart attack was much the same, maybe some random luck just killed someone.

"Karma is right," Larc admits. "Why do you think we play games?" he directed the question to Krys, she pursed her lips before nodding.

"I get it, it's fun. An escape from what we want but staying in our rooms and not doing anything is kind of..."

""-Shit."" It was a combined effort of the three to answer.

Karma started going into the ocean, readying himself to get his clothes drenched. "It's settled, Krys and Xed, go to the mark on the map. Larc and I will get to the ship and see what is inside. The captain's quarters must have some clues as to where we are."

Not a second wasted they acted upon his command, the two heading to the inner parts of the island while Karma and Larc swam, yes, swam all the way to the ship.

It was anchored a good distance away or else it would run aground on the reefs or sea bed. The waves bobbed side to side as the two soon reach the ladders and climbed on. What came next was worry.

"Damn, so it's the size and looks of an actual galleon, minus the staysails and a lot of cannons. We only have four on each side on the top deck but I can see the gunports on the side, we also have chaser cannons mounted on the front, the bow of the ship."

"Why is that bad?" Larc asked as they walked around the deck. "More size and space is better right? it's more accurate than what Sea of Thieves has."

"Dude, galleons need hundreds of men. I don't know if you can count but we only have four people on board and I don't think I consider Xed to be able to help unfurl sails or slacken ropes to catch the wind - let alone sail but it's the only choice we have if we want to leave this place."

"How do we sail this anyways?"

"Don't ask me, I'm talking out of my ass right now but I can guess what we need to do. Mainly we need a lot of people controlling the sails."

"Can't we just do it like normal?"

"I don't think each of us can single-handedly pull ropes hard enough on our own to make the sails go up or side to side."

"I think it's possible."

"Possible? We are sailing a galleon with four men."

"Jack Sparrow and Will Turner did it in the movies, I think we can do the same."

Karma looked him dead in the eyes with raised eyebrows. "Are you serious? I guess it doesn't matter anyways, we need to sail this if we have anywhere else to go from getting away from here."

The captain's quarters were larger than in-game, it had enough space to act like a decent-sized dorm you can afford. The map was one thing that could save their bacon, possibly letting them learn where they were.

"If whoever sent us here was meticulous enough our make our ship into reality and the fact that we could pull out maps from anywhere, I'm guessing we have something in this ship that helps. Look, the map is not the Sea of Thieves."

As the map somehow could be interacted with like a touch screen, Larc had a sudden jolt of recognition. "Hey, uh can you zoom the map out?"

Karma raised an eyebrow before doing as recommended, the words of many islands had been named but as the sea grew more and the islands shrunk from the map. Larc palmed his face and inhaled deeply.

"...East Blue!"

"Like the one in that anime you watch?"

"Yes! This is One Piece! Look, let me have the map." The captain stood aside as Larc started zooming in on places quite far away from their own position. "See?! Shells town where Luffy started! Orange Town where they fought Buggy! Conomi Islands! Loguetown! Reverse Mountain!"

Larc started naming everything but stopped as clouds seemingly blocked a large section of the map. "The Grand Line can't be seen. Holy shit... we are in One Piece."

"It looks like you know a lot."

"No, we need to know when this is."

"Are there outposts nearby? If Sea of Thieves had ones present on the map, maybe there should be one inside One Piece."

"Nothing shown..." Larc said with disappointment. "There's another island from here though, it's twice as large as this one. Our ship is shown on the map and we're nearly 3/4 to the north of the entire ocean."

"Looks like we know what to do. Find out when we are placed in this world and I think we all realize our purpose here right?"

"What?"

"We are the Reaper's Bones in another world, we sink, loot, and sell. What's life without a little roleplay? I wanna have fun!"

"...Heh, I guess that college application won't be finished eh?"

"Damn, right!"

Sets of splashes were heard, the two knew who they were based on the time frame from when they left the shore. "Hey! Did you find anything on the X?" Karma yelled, two people swimming in the water with a chest being cradled by Krys with one arm.

"We found a chest, we don't know what it is," Xed reported, Krys eventually reached the deck and placed the chest on the floor. "It's some kind of fruit."

"A... fruit?" Larc uttered.