Chapter 1: A Pirate and His Ship 1/2

A Good Ship

Xipholynx

Summary: Reincarnation doesn't always land you in the same type of body as your previous one. Luffy sets sail from his home in a living ship and goes on a journey to "gather a crew, find the greatest treasures, have the greatest adventures and become King of the Pirates." AU

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, settings, etc. of One Piece are the property of Oda Eiichiro. No copyright infringement is intended.

Chapter One: A Pirate and His Ship

"Wherever we want to go, we go. That's what a ship is, you know. It's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails. That's what a ship needs. But what a ship is… what the Black Pearl really is… is freedom." - Captain Jack Sparrow

Early in the morning of the fifth of May which coincided with the seventeenth birthday of a certain boy named Monkey D Luffy many things around the world were happening.

In the New World, the four Yonko had a surprisingly low key day all things considered for them. Big Mom enjoyed a decadent picnic on Jelly Island in her territory. Kaido drank a galleon's worth of sake and had one of his energetic cheerful drunk moods. Whitebeard drank a brig's worth of sake which was smuggled in by his sons even under the watchful eye of his mother hen of a doctor's surveillance. Then, of course, there was Shanks who drank a sloop's worth of sake just because he was in a partying sort of mood.

At the Marine Headquarters, on the other hand, the Fleet Admiral and all three Admirals of the marines separately began to encounter headache-inducing problems. Sengoku's problem involved his (regrettably) closest friend Monkey D Garp breaking down (another) wall to enter his office in order to announce that he was immediately going to be taking a trip to visit the East Blue (again) instead of patrolling the Grand Line like what was required from him.

Admiral Kizaru found that an entire filing cabinet worth of files full of Marine supply routes and out of the way service stations had completely vanished after a new blond lieutenant with a burn scar had volunteered to put them away for him so he would be free to take a quick nap in his office. Losing those files was going to generate even more work for him now.

Admiral Akainu had found that a bonsai that he had been cultivating for over two decades had been completely removed of all its leaves which had then been sprinkled mockingly around the pot and the trunk had been whittled completely down into a mess of splinters. He eventually found, after interrogating the nearest office workers, that it could only have only been done by a new blond lieutenant with a burn scar and no one had gotten the lieutenant's name.

Admiral Aokiji suddenly had to deal with about three years worth of reports suddenly appearing on his desk indicating sightings of a certain Nico Robin appearing in the Grand Line, indicating she had probably left the West Blue at least two years before that. She was apparently cozying up to a bounty hunting group known as Baroque Works and was in close proximity to a certain Grand Line kingdom known for its ancient history and hidden poneglyph. He silently despaired and wondered why that girl wouldn't stay hidden somewhere modern for once instead of an ancient and historically significant world government kingdom.

The fresh wave of rookie pirates that would one day soon be referred to by the world as the Supernova Generation were already making their way into or just beginning to make their names known all across the world as they began to cross into Paradise.

With no way of knowing that a force of nature unparalleled since the time of Roger himself would soon be intersecting in their lives and scattered all across the East Blue, the future crew of Monkey D Luffy somehow were independent of each other having pretty bad days. Truly there was nothing like being tied up or being forced to be a slave to an island invading pirate to really put the spice back in your life. Regardless of the things occurring around the world and locally Luffy in the meantime was ready to leave home and nothing was going to stop him.

Nothing but his ridiculous ship anyway.

"DAWNIE! YOU'RE TOO BIG! I wanted to sail out for the first time in something smaller like Ace's ship!"

The small crowd which had gathered at the docks of Fuusha Village was treated to the sight and sound of their somewhat beloved village idiot shouting up at a large beautiful ship. It had an intricately carved figurehead that resembled a dragon's head with a mouth that grinned wide with sharp pointy teeth and wings up along the rail all the way back to the aft. The hull of the ship was a rich green, with smooth, flowing lines from bow to stern. The primary mast held large, white, and yellow sails while slightly smaller, triangular, purple sails were up on the shorter foremast. Really it put to shame most other ships that had ever been docked at the village and it was close to the same size as the Red Force which had famously docked at Fuusha Village a decade prior.

It was also much too big to be sailed by a single person.

"I just wanted you to see how big I can be. I can shrink down a lot but my insides will shift and you'll have to stay up on the deck since I won't have any room for you on the inside."

The quiet whispering voice was only heard by a few and so the majority of the crowd gasped in shock when the large ship began to shrink before their very eyes down to a smaller one of only about thirty feet long from bow to aft with just a single mast with a square white sail in the center of the deck. The dragon figurehead seemed to be pouting now instead of sporting the previous proud grin.

Mayor Woop Slap lived up to his name and smacked Luffy in irritation across the back of his head, taking care to avoid displacing the golden straw hat, while he launched into a lecture. "You little hooligan, I knew you were up in that jungle learning magic tricks from a mountain witch."

Luffy didn't react to being smacked since he was made of rubber and said with conviction. "I don't have magic tricks just rubber ones. Good idea though mayor. I'll look for a magician for my crew and a musician."

Woop Slap rolled his eyes and muttered with irritation, "Running off to be a pirate like this on a bewitched ship. What kind of reputation will you give to our village like this?"

Luffy couldn't stop the smile from growing on his face as he declared, "Doesn't matter because no matter what I'm going to be the King of the Pirates! Just you wait, Shanks. I'm setting sail today!"

"Bye Luffy!" Makino waved her hand to her departing younger brother figure with a sunny, proud smile on her face, "I hope you get to go where no one else has ever gone, do what others have never done, live like others have never lived and make sure to come back one day to tell me all about it!"

"I sure will Makino! Take care of Dadan since she'll come down to the village when she feels lonely, won't you?" Luffy requested.

"I will don't worry. Get going now." Makino encouraged.

With an enthusiastic standing jump, Luffy landed in the center of the deck of his ship and pumped both fists up into the air. "Time for us to go now, Dawn! Let's go on an adventure and make some friends! I want to sail you until we get out of the bay though!"

"Fine, fine. If you fall in the water I'll pull you up with a net like you're a fish though." The shrunken-down ship threatened without any heat.

Luffy happily adjusted Dawn's sails and managed to do so without tangling any lines. Her sail caught the breeze coming down of Mt Colubo and Luffy took hold of the helm in order to sail out to the edge of the bay where it spilled into the open sea. Before too long Luffy reached the furthest distance he had ever been in the bay and stopped Dawn's movement to lie in wait for his fated opponent. He couldn't hear any sounds from the village this far out, just the sound of water hitting the hull of Dawn and the still familiar sounds of seagulls crying out what seemed to be warnings. Luffy grinned.

"Ah, the weather sure is nice today, don't you think so Dawn?" Luffy seemed to be eager for something to happen. The water rippled and a face that was scaly, grey, and at least ten feet long poked its head up out of the water before it straight out growled at Luffy.

"There you are, sea monster. I was waiting for you. Let me show you what I've learned over the past ten years." With a wide grin, Luffy wound up his arm and punched the Lord of the Coast in the face with a shout of, "Rubber Pistol!"

After taking care of the barracuda shaped sea monster Luffy let Dawn take over sailing as he laid back flat on the deck and let out a loud and very stretchy yawn. He had already been awake for hours before the sun had risen out of his excitement over the beginning of his journey and the ebbs and swells of the sea were rapidly pulling him to unconsciousness.

"Go find us an adventure while I take a nap, won't you? Oh and try not to sink or else we'll both die." Luffy lackadaisically gave his first order as a captain on the sea.

"I won't sink, just go to sleep, future pirate king." Dawn huffed as her sail caught a breeze and she began to travel westward. Luffy pulled his hat over his eyes to shield them from the sun and instantly fell fast asleep.

After a few hours of event-less travel, which was accompanied by the snoring coming from Luffy, Dawn heard a loud cracking sound and focused her attention on the direction from which it came. A shape was just visible along the western horizon and after adjusting her sail to go towards it faster the details of the shape became clearer.

"Another ship." Dawn mused out loud and focused on the ensign on top of the other ship's main mast which sported an elongated grinning skull superimposed over a crossed pair of bones on a black background and corrected herself. "Another pirate ship. I'm sure Luffy can find an adventure over there. Luffy! Adventure!"

At the loud sound of Luffy's third favorite word (after 'meat' and 'brother' but slightly in front of 'hat' and 'Nakama') he opened his eyes and tilted his hat up in order to squint up at the sky. "Huh? Dawn? Is that a weird ostrich or a flying panda?"

"A what?" Dawn asked.

There was another cracking sound from the pirate ship which Dawn suddenly realized was actually the sound of a gunshot and there was a sudden heavy thud as something very big hit the deck in front of Luffy. It was a very fluffy feathered bird with black and white feathers in a pattern that was reminiscent of a panda with a giant white beak almost a meter long. Its body was longer than Luffy was tall and it must have had a wingspan of at least seven meters. It was also bleeding sluggishly from a gunshot wound right at the junction between its right-wing and shoulder socket.

"Oh, it's hurt. What happened to it!? Wait- this is a mystery bird! Awesome! You're the best Dawnie! You found an adventure so fast!" Luffy cheered as he gave Dawn's mast a triple wrapped hug in joy and shook it in excitement.

"BALLOON! Run away! Fly far away!" A forceful girl's voice shouted from high up on the deck of the pirate ship.

"Woah! A pirate ship and you're trying to run away? Are you about to abandon your friend up there?" Luffy asked crossly as he shook his hand at the bird an irritated scolding motion.

The bird glared at Luffy and produced an irritated squawking "gwaah" before using its giant beak to bite Luffy's head which simply squished like a compressed marshmallow and reinflated once the bird released him.

A different slightly wheezing voice from high up the other ship's deck interrupted Luffy and the bird from further messing around with each other.

"Straw hat youngin'! Carry that bird onto the deck, please."

"Well, he did say please. I haven't heard of a polite pirate since Ace left. I'm going up! Come with me weird bird!" Luffy grabbed the bird with one arm and prepared to climb up the rope ladder that was dropped over the side of the galleon's hull.

"Luffy don't forget to take a lure with you so I can find you when you run off. The ocean's a lot bigger than the mountain and I could lose you if you don't." A lizard that looked like it was made out of green leaves and tiny purple and yellow flowers landed on top of Luffy's straw hat with a barely audible pliffing sound.

"Okay Dawnie, just don't let it eat my hat while it's up there." Luffy lectured even as he crossed his eyes to look at the leafy lizard now hanging out just on the edge of the brim of his hat.

The leaf lizard stuck a vine tongue out at Luffy and said with an identical voice as the ship's. "I'd never do such a thing. Straw is gross anyway."

"I hope I make a new friend! Up we go then!" Luffy cheered even as he scaled up the ladder to the deck of the galleon pirate ship.

As soon as Luffy arrived on the deck of the other pirate ship four rather burly pirates dove at the panda bird and began hustling it to a cage up by the galleon's forecastle deck right across from the main mast. There, looking about as angry as a forcibly restrained cat, was a teenage girl tied up in a way that seemed almost nostalgic to Luffy. She had apple fleshed skin, licorice black eyes, and wore her short cotton candy blue hair back with a pair of pink clips on both sides of her head. Her voice carried clearly through the air even above the loud talking and shouting of the pirates on the deck.

"How dare you! Why'd you bring Balloon back here?"

"Balloon?" Luffy replied even as he sat on the rail of the other ship closer to the girl.

The girl's eyes were as sharp as polished black ice as she continued her accusations toward Luffy. "He got caught by them because of you! You brought him up here - I was watching!"

Luffy's own eyes lit up as he finally connected the dots of information he was provided. "Oh, is the flying panda's name Balloon then?"

"HE'S NOT A PANDA!" The captured girl's teeth seemed as sharp as daggers as she snarled even more savagely at Luffy.

Luffy carried on his conversation without a single change in his demeanor or tone of voice. "He was shot and landed on Dawn ya know."

"That's 'cause he was shot by Hexagon Spiel."

"Spiel? Who's that?"

"This ship's captain. He's a black magic user and a pirate. He invaded the village I was living in and even though all the people the raised arms to fight him off he used his magic and was able to completely massacre them. No one could even get close to him."

"Captain on deck!" One of the pirates shouted and they gathered crew stood in rank and file in two groups leading up to the mast causing Luffy to frown in displeasure. Why the heck a pirate crew was acting like a bunch of boring marines was a mystery he wasn't in particularly interested in investigating. The girl explained their weird behavior anyway.

"That's him - Hexagon Spiel. Even his crew is absolutely terrified of him. It's because of him the village I lived in was destroyed. If you fight him, he'll kill you." The girl seemed terrified and her voice quivered but Luffy was unmoved by her act. She wasn't struggling like he had done when he had been tied up and terrified for his life like that after all. More important to him though was the other pirate captain.

The approaching pirate didn't seem very old but he had a false smile that exposed hippopotamus like teeth in a wide thin-lipped grin. His complexion was like the inside of a jackfruit with skin that seemed to be stretched tightly over a long oval face. He had a distinctive, long, thin scar over the left side of his face that bisected over his eye without having it missing. He wore his mottled wheat-colored hair in a hairstyle of six pigtails, a black tricorn hat on top of his head, and carried an old broom in his left hand while wearing a pair of pistols stashed in a sash around his waist. When he finally spoke his voice was both reedy and a bit wheezy.

"You're... the one who helped capture the roc. Thank you youngin'... Ahhahhahhah!"

Luffy stared fixated on Spiel's face before abruptly lifting his hand to point and matter-of-factly declaring. "You have a funny-looking head."

The captive girl and assembled pirate crew gaped equally aghast at Luffy's insulting statement with only the captive girl having enough of her senses to shout. "Stupid! Did you listen to a single thing I said!?"

The leafy lizard on top of Luffy's hat hissed in either glee or warning and Luffy started to laugh. "Shishishishi, but look at him! He looks so weird!"

Even as Luffy continued to laugh and the girl continued to rage at him a vein of fury popped up on Spiel's forehead and with a snarl ordered. "IMPRISON THOSE FOOLS RIGHT NOW!"

Not five minutes later Luffy and the girl were locked together in the ship's brig below deck. The underling pirate who locked them up parted with a teasing grin as he put the keys on the ring next to the door and said, "Be good kids and try not to have too much fun down here."

Luffy happily looked out from a porthole and said, "Ooh, what a great view."

The girl sat and hugged her legs, sulking angrily on the floor next to the bars of their shared cell and muttered, "I wanna kill you."

Alarmed by her statement Luffy's eyes widened and he blurted, "Please don't."

"This is all your fault. Who are you anyway?" The girl demanded even as she glared up at him.

"Me? I'm Monkey D Luffy. Who're you?"

"Ann. Just Ann. Now how am I supposed to get Balloon out of here?" Ann worried planning to ignore Luffy now that their introductions were out of the way.

Luffy, however, was not one to be ignored. "Balloon? That big ostrich of yours?"

"He's not an ostrich! He's a roc!" Ann seemed to transition from angry to wistful very quickly as she spoke in a more gentle tone of voice. "I've been with him as far back as I can remember. We've played together, slept together, traveled together, and have never been apart. To others, he might just be a bird but to me, he's someone I can trust more than anything else in the world. My very best friend. I just want to free Balloon and never feel caged ever again."

Luffy stared at Ann in silence for a few seconds before nodding and saying, "I see then. Why were you kidnapped by these guys?"

"It's because they think I'm cute," Ann replied with an accompanying wink and cheesy sparkle effect, trying for bravado. The effect was lost on Luffy though whose expression didn't change a bit. Since it didn't work in order to distract his line of thinking she continued. "Forget about that, though. What about you? Why'd you set sail and what's with the weird lizard on your hat?"

Thrilled to segway into his favorite of all topics to talk about Luffy wore a huge grin as he proudly declared his dream. "Me? I'm going to gather a crew, find the greatest treasures, have the greatest adventures and I'm going to be the King of the Pirates! And Dawn here is going to be my ship through the entire journey and beyond!"

Ann looked at the lizard on Luffy's hat and then back down to stare at Luffy's completely excited and serious face. Upon coming to the realization that she was trapped in the brig with a mad man she very carefully pointed out. "You realize that is a lizard and not a ship, right?"

"I'm actually a plant, not a ship. This is a lizard shaped lure." Dawn finally spoke through the lizard causing Ann to make a noise a bit like a mouse encountering a tiger by mistake as it walked through the grass.

Luffy laughed and plucked the lizard off the brim of his hat in order to bring it closer to Ann's face so she could see it better, though she shrunk away from him a bit. "This is a little thing Dawn can make with which lets her find me when I leave. When I was a little kid I was almost killed a couple of times. One of those times I was thrown into a jungle at night. That was when Dawn was only a plant that lived in a tree and she used these things to bring food from further away than she could reach since she was stuck in the tree. She almost ate me by accident but when I talked to her she became my first friend instead. About a year later I got my hat from the person who inspired me to become a pirate. This hat is my object of treasure and Dawn is my first treasure."

"Aw, you're my first treasure too, Luffy," Dawn said through the lizard with the fondness carrying clearly in her tone of voice.