"So whaddya think?" Johnny asked, smirking. It was two days later and we had finally arrived at our destination, forced to put up with Lucy's bad manners and total lack of shame the entire way. I mean, come on, I know she grew up with mountain bandits, but still ...
"WHOA! It's a huge fish!" Lucy exclaimed in awe.
Nami was delighted. "It looks lovely!" she gasped.
"This is the coolest place ever!" Usopp proclaimed.
"More like the weirdest place ever," I muttered. I mean, seriously. The place was one big FISH! It looked cool in the anime, but in real life... It was just freaky. I gawked at it and wondered who had had enough stupidity to actually build something like this. I was brought out of my slight horror, however, by the sound of warning bells.
"Ah! What the... a Marine ship?!" Long Nose worried. "All the way out here?"
Sure enough, a Marine ship was closing in on us from the right side. It was at least twice as big as the Going Merry, and it was painted blue. Its sails simply said, 'Marines.' Such great creativity, huh?
"Hey, Lucy-chan. They're not gonna start firing at us, are they?"
"Just my luck," Zoro grumbled. "Of course the Marines would show up."
"But... how did that ship..." Nami started.
Johnny snuck over to the boy's cabin. Its door was open and Yosaku was peeking out of it nervously. Johnny joined his brother and hid behind the door.
A man stepped forward and looked over the railing of the Marine ship. "I've never seen that mark before..." he mused. He was tall and lanky, his tan face suggesting he spent a good deal of time outdoors. A scar ran across his cheek. He had little muscle but huge iron knuckles covering his hand. He wore a simple white-striped suit over a blue shirt, and his hair was... his hair...
IT WAS PINK! It was freakin' pink ! Pink hair in real life is ugly. I shuddered involuntarily at the grotesqueness of his hair. I hoped I would never have to see that guy in my life again.
"I am Iron Fist Fullbody!" the Marine declared, slamming a hand on the side of his ship. "But you can just call me 'sir.' You there! Who's the captain? Identify yourself!"
"My name is Lucy!" shouted Lucy.
Usopp stepped up, too, but I hit the back of his head before he could say anything and gave him a dark look. "Don't start up, Usopp," I hissed. He shrank back.
"We only made our flag the day before yesterday!"
"That's right, Marine, and I drew it!" Usopp bragged, apparently having forgotten my warning. A small tic mark of annoyance appeared on both me and Lucy's heads.
Fullbody smirked. "Heh. You did? Is that so?" He must've noticed Johnny and Yosaku peeking from behind the door, because he said, "Hey, you two right there! I've seen you before. You're that bounty hunter duo that goes after the small fish. Right?"
"Yeah—well—we—" Johnny stuttered, shivering nervously.
"So, you've finally been caught by pirates."
"Well—actually, we—"
He chuckled. "Now that's a laugh."
"No, actually that's called a chuckle," I told him.
Zoro snorted and rolled his eyes.
A woman, wearing a red dress with blonde hair tied up in a ponytail, came out and grabbed his arm lightly. She must've been a major whore, because nobody I'd ever known would be willing to date a guy that damned ugly.
"Hey, come on baby. Let's get going," she said.
"...Sure."
"Hey, wait a minute!" Johnny called indignantly. He pulled a stack of wanted posters out of his coat pocket and threw them in the air. "You think small-time bounty hunters would go after these guys?"
One of them seemed to catch Nami's eye, and I could take a guess as to which one it was.
Fullbody and his girlfriend simply ignored Johnny and strolled off to the back of the ship. He told two Marine subordinates that I'd only just noticed, "They're an eyesore. Sink 'em."
"Sir!" they shouted with a salute.
Johnny and Yosaku started grumbling about being ignored and claimed that he'd better be ready the next time he saw them. Nami knelt next to the bounty posters and looked at one in particular that depicted a guy that looked even uglier than Fullbody, if that was possible. He had a long, jagged nose, blue skin, pointy teeth, and appeared to be a cross between a shark and a man.
It was the Fishman pirate, Arlong.
"Those are wanted pirates, Nami-aneki. In other words, if we defeat those guys, we get the reward money," Johnny explained.
"Pretty good business, huh, big sis?" Yosaku said smugly.
Nami crumpled Arlong's wanted poster, her body shaking. I looked at her sadly, knowing why she was so upset.
"Hey, you guys, look!" Usopp said suddenly. "They're pointing that cannon right at us!"
BOOM!
Lucy, who had been sitting on the railing, jumped to action. "You guys just leave it to me! Gomu-Gomu nooooo..." she gripped the mast and the figurehead's goat ear. The cannonball slammed into her slim body and she stretched far backward. She almost slammed into Zoro, but he moved out of the way at the last second. "SLINGSHOT!"
Suddenly the part of the ear that she'd grabbed onto broke off and she curved to the right. "Whoooooaaaaa! Not good!" TWANG! Her body retracted with the sound of a rubber band being flicked and Lucy slammed into the Merry's figure head. The cannonball went soaring in the complete wrong direction, crashing through the roof of the Baratie!
"Idiot!" I sighed, facepalming.
***
"Dang, what's taking Lucy so long?" Usopp groaned.
"They'll probably make her work without pay for at least a month!" Nami said. "She should've just said it was the Marines's fault instead of being so freakin' honest."
Johnny and Yosaku were fixing the part of the railing of the upper deck that Johnny had broken in his short fight with Luffy. Nami and Usopp were looking at the Baratie in exasperation, probably wondering how they'd managed to hook up with such an idiot captain. Zoro was sleeping where Nami's mikan grove would soon be and I had pulled my iPod out of my suitcase, wondering if I could get on the Internet in this world. If I could, it sure would be a surprise, but anything was possible in the world of One Piece.
And wouldn't you know it? I could!
It's a good thing I didn't fall in the ocean. My suitcase isn't waterproof and my iPod would've gotten soaked! Still, I wonder how I'm still getting three bars even here in a world without computers, iPods, cell phones, or anything like that... Not that I'm complaining or anything.
I decided to just go with it. It was easier and hurt my brain less than trying to come up with a plausible explanation.
The first thing I did was Google search Aes, trying to find out anything I could about him. If he was a god, then most likely there was some sort of ancient story or something that involved him.
Myths with him in it = 0.
In fact, I couldn't get a single hit on him. It was like he was nonexistent, or at least he'd never appeared to humankind before. And what kind of demon or god is never seen by humans, or didn't have even a single myth about him? It was strange, and I didn't like it. Not one bit.
Aes had said the quest I've been given would be explained once I got to this world.
Had it been explained yet? No, it hadn't.
He was really starting to tick me off. He'd ripped me away from my home, from everyone and everything I'd ever known, and then thrown me into the world of my favorite anime, which I had previously believed was fictional. Except he hadn't even managed to do that properly, and now I was stuck in an alternate universe of that world where Luffy was a freaking GIRL! Not to mention that I still had no idea how to control those 'powers' he said I had, and that I had no idea what I was supposed to actually be doing here.
If I ever saw him again, I was gonna kick his ass for doing this to me.
Johnny and Yosaku's idiot "Hooray, hooray!" dance brought me out of my angry musings. Apparently they had just finished fixing the railing, but it didn't matter to me one bit why they were doing that dance.
"WOULD YOU STOP THAT?!" I bellowed, a tic mark pulsing on the back of my head.
They stopped that.
"Someone's got anger issues," muttered Zoro.
"Eh? Don't even get me started, Marimo!"
"Shitty-psychic!"
"Broken compass!"
"ONI GIRI!"
"HAWK BLAST!"
" NO FIGHTING! "
—BAM! POW!
"And she says she's weak ," Usopp sighed from a safe distance.
Johnny and Yosaku brought up a rowboat from somewhere in the Going Merry and set it in the water. "Come on, everyone! Let's go to the Baratie!"
"Yes!" I cheered, my mood immediately brightening. I jumped into the rowboat. "I'm starving !"
"You've got mood swings like a granny," Zoro muttered.
"What did you say!?"
"It's gonna be a long day, isn't it?" Yosaku asked Usopp, who nodded in agreement