Chapter 2

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Her childhood, Nao thinks, was rather strange, to say the least.

Of course, some of that had to be accredited to her upbringing in the busiest whore house of the North Blue. The rest of her oddities, however, were undoubtedly to be blamed on the fact that Fate, or God, or Buddha, or whoever the hell was in charge of this whole reincarnation business, had botched it up. She had never died before, but she was fairly certain it didn't entail waking up in a new body with an old mind.

At the one month mark, her eccentricities are briefly noted, if only in the form of rumors spread throughout the red light district. A newborn child in a whore's world was already more than enough to spur the fabled (and fucking annoying) 'geisha gossip', but the outlandish behavior Nao displayed only served to further fuel their need to discuss her very existence.

Unlike most children, Nao hadn't cried much—at all, in fact. (Her pride made it fucking impossible for her to display mock baby-like qualities, regardless of the suspicions that would arise because of her lack of them.) Instead, she observed, keeping the working girls under a watchful eye that held an intelligence that seemed far beyond what a child should've actually had at the time. (In actuality, this staring habit came about due to her having forgotten how to properly operate as a lump of real, warm, living flesh, as opposed to the lump of consciousness she had existed as for who knows how long. To put it simply, it was just too much of a bitch for Nao to do anything but stare.)

It was nothing for the house inhabitants to truly concern themselves over, though. After all, there wasn't really a desire to become that one lunatic(the one that constantly spouted nonsense about demon-possessed children) amidst the working girls. Even whores, the arguably uneducated members of society, weren't that superstitious. Rather than spreading more baseless dirt on a child that could have simply been innately shy (which wasn't actually the case, but hey, whatever got them to shut up worked for Nao), they chose to ignore her tendency to look at things a little too inquisitively, and eventually, her habits became commonplace in the brothel.

She is exactly nine months old when the first real anomaly starts.

That day had begun normally enough, the usual rotation routine taking place amongst the 'sisters', as they came to refer to themselves as, as they took turns keeping an eye on Nao. Their attitudes, she had observed, had shifted away from the original tentativeness, having—dare she say it—grown fond of the docile(albeit a bit creepy) baby. Though she couldn't understand exactly what they were saying about her(they spoke in foreign tongues—Japanese perhaps—and back then, she had only been capable of understanding the commonly used phrases), but she was sure it was no longer outlandish lies. In more humorous terms, they had ceased their avoidance of her, no longer acting as if she were the second coming of the bubonic plague.

But life would have been too easy if her difficulties had ended there, and so, not long after the timid niche was found, it was destroyed—by her own thoughts nonetheless.

The sister—a girl no older than fifteen—on baby-watch duty had drifted asleep, leaving Nao to wallow in her own thoughts for a brief moment before the next girl would switch with her. It wasn't a specific movement from the young girl that triggered it, but rather a simple comment Nao had absentmindedly thought of while peering at the dozing kid through the bars of her crib.

'Her sleeping face sort of looks like—' Her mind blatantly refused to complete the sentence. She scrunched her nose up as she futilely tried to finish her thought. 'Who?'

Nao's face bore a look of utter confusion for the slightest of moments, one that was instantaneously exchanged for an expression filled to the brim with unshakable horror as her mind finished the blank with an unrelenting chant that sent her reeling back into that godforsaken Oblivion(sistersister littlesister little sistersistersister sISTERSISTERSISTER). The vocalization of the distress immediately followed—the walls of the compound flooding with the uncharacteristic wails of a habitually mute child, while her mind was similarly engulfed by a feeling of pure dread and fear and wretchedness and resentment that felt so familiar and yet so foreign, a prospect that seemed near impossible because how the fuck could she have forgotten the feeling of wrath from which her very existence had come. Terror had swallowed her up whole in that moment, steadily blurring the edges of her vision before finally rendering her unconscious.

She is nine months and a day old when she, while waking up in the aftermath of the chaos she caused(she'd never seen so many dignified women throw away their pride to sleep on the floor of her nursery), swears—for the sake of all she persevered through while in Oblivion—to never again let that fury die out.

She is one when she realizes just how much shit she is in.

The working girls had reverted back to their original stance on her presence by then, consistently tiptoeing around in fear of setting the now-toddler into another tantrum.

At that point she had begun to walk, having taken her first few teetering steps a month beforehand. (Nao had been far too bored and far too exasperated to put off learning how to walk any longer, normal walking age be damned.) The girls continued to take turns watching Nao, though now they lingered a couple steps behind her as she explored the house, as if frightened by her. It was pretty fucking annoying, to say the least. In their eyes, she had devolved from the second coming of the bubonic plague to the physical manifestation of the Devil himself. Any qualms against being overly superstitious had been thrown out the window by the brothel tenants, a fact proven by the new surplus of crosses that decorated the building. It might've been funny, (because who the fuck would hang up a cross in a business that relied and profited on sinners?) had they not been specifically placed there to ward away the demons that were rumored to have possessed her.

Even Mama-san, the ever so rational owner of the brothel, approached her precariously, despite being the one who had initially agreed to raise Nao after her birth giver(she refused to refer to a woman who was younger than her, regardless of their physical ages, as her Mother) had died after childbirth. Had her muscles been developed enough, Nao would have rolled her eyes at the house's antics.

Paranoid prostitutes aside, Nao— as much as she hated to admit it—was partly to blame for their skewed perception of her.

She had continued to unabashedly display non-childlike behaviors—if not even more so than before—seeing that her muscles no longer suffered under the Oblivion-induced atrophy, though nothing compared to the quirks she would develop after 'that day'.

'That day'—the day she had learned exactly where she was—had begun with an air of uncertainty. Her usual babysitters were nowhere to be seen—a rather odd phenomenon when her freshly discovered walking skills were taken into account. (Because what kind of moronic, shitty adult leaves a kid—a kid who was now finally capable of running off—alone?) It truly baffled her. Even her past-life self—young adult unreliability and all—had taken special care in keeping a keen eye on toddlers under her supervision. Children were unpredictable enough without being the product of a shitty reincarnation job.

With an insatiable curiosity(and no worrisome girls to stop her), Nao had waddled her way out of her nursery, heading towards the source of the commotion that had drawn the attention of all the sisters. (It obviously had to have been something huge. Most of the whores she had met up until that point had been fazed by nothing, save for demons and losing money.)

She had stood at the doorway of Mama-san's office, hidden behind the steadily growing crowd of fretful working girls who had gathered around a single snail of all things. For a moment she had wondered if she had finally succumbed to the perpetually looming threat of insanity, because as odd as the sight itself was, the deja vu feeling that came along with it was the cherry on top. She had no chance to further pick at her allegedly diminishing lucidity though, as the snail began to fucking talk.

Despite the room being occupied by a headcount that exceeded way beyond the area's holding capacity(the Occupational Safety and Health Administration would have had a heart attack, had they seen it), not a word from the snail (the fucking snail) was missed. (Then again, who wouldn't give their undivided attention to a speaking snail?)

"Want my ultimate treasures? It's possible." A semi-familiar voice had broken through the static, almost causing the planet itself to cease motion.

"I will give them to those who can find them. I have gathered everything in this world and have already hidden them in 'that place.'"

"Zan!" The sickening sound of metal slicing flesh replaced the jubilant voice as its owner's words sank in across the globe, and while excited shouts rang out from the radio after the man's proclamation had settled in, the women of the brothel fell into a stunned, stony silence.

"Kami help us," a sister muttered under her breath, jaw clenched in an odd mixture of annoyance and fear.

Nao was conflicted.

99% of her told her to hightail her way out of the steadily despairing room, as she was pretty sure someone had just been publicly executed. The remaining 1% of her (the part that was probably more curious than what was recommended for those who planned on living a long life) begged her to continue eavesdropping (and it isn't hard to guess which option her shitty-decision-making self picked). She figured if she had already fallen that deep into shit, she might as well stay and be enlightened on the above-mentioned shit. She had been certain that all she needed was one more nudge to recall where she had recognized the voice from, so what harm could a few more moments spent in the room have done?

Life's reply to that rhetorical question did not disappoint.

While she had debated the pros and cons of her two options(which required her staying in place to do so anyways), Mama-san's face had grown grim.

"That absurd man—always doing whatever he liked." Mama-san sighed, pausing to shake her head in disapproval.

An inexplicable feeling of anxiety had washed over Nao before Mama-san had even finished.

"Gol D. Roger."

It took a few seconds for her uncharacteristically hazy mind to connect all the dots. She had searched through her memory—old and new—knowing damn well she had heard that name before, before it finally clicked.

Oh. (Fate was probably fucking her up on purpose, at this point.)

Oh. (Scratch that. Fate had definitely turned screwing Nao over into a personal mission.)

She had recognized the voice, alright, though it wasn't exactly what she had expected. She thought it might've turned out to be someone she had met in her previous life, or perhaps even a customer she might have overheard during her time at the brothel, or really, anyone other than a fucking character that shouldn't even exist—and one from a manga she had read in literally another life, at that!

And consequently, caused by the downright illogicality of the clusterfuck that is her life, Nao is also one when she utters her first word.

"Shit."

At one and a half, Nao makes the jump from a passive complainer to someone actively giving Fate the middle finger. (Naturally, she also sparks more demon-child rumors along the way.)

She had, to some extent, wrapped her head around her circumstance, though she still hadn't fully grasped the direness of her situation. Putting it mildly, she had merely accepted it enough to function and plot.

By then muscles in her hand had finally started listening to her brain, giving her a level of dexterity that was more akin to the one she had been capable of as she trained to be a surgeon in her previous life. She couldn't quite preform a heart bypass surgery yet, but she could write—a skill that seemed a lot more useful than the former, in her situation.

And write, she did.

She wrote down everything—grasping at straws to document every known memory she had left in an attempt to prepare for a fight against Fate. She wrote of her family and dearest friends first, forcing her shaky toddler body to write as neatly as possible(which really wasn't neat at all).

In her twenty-first month as Nao, she finishes documenting any remains of the memories of those cherished by her, and starts jotting down what little she can remember of the events that had played out in the One Piece world.

The working girls of the house had noticed her latest quirk, though none made an effort to stop it. Sure, they knew(or at the very least, speculated) that it was some sort of comprehensible writing(something far beyond what a normal toddler should be able to do), but it was written in gibberish(in reality, it was English, but English grammar rules were more than rubbish enough to classify the language as gibberish), and they really didn't have the time—or the want—to be translating a toddler's potentially nonsensical writings(they were still busy worrying over the repercussions of Roger's words), and so they settled to simply discuss it among themselves.

And so, over the course of several months, Nao had gone on, her actions unimpaired as she listed every known moment of significance that came to mind.

Because Nao, as fucked as she probably was, had a plan.

I have the third chapter planned out and half-written. If things go as planned, it'll probably be uploaded in 3-4 days. This was the last chapter without any direct interaction with canon characters. Please leave a review, if you have the time! Have a lovely day, guys.