Chapter 4: Bring Your Child To Work Day 1/4

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 "to gather a crew, find the greatest treasures, have the greatest adventures, and to 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 Four - Bring Your Child To Work Day:

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing." - Helen Keller

Zoro woke up with the feeling of the sun shining on his face, the smell of salted fish-and-chicken-egg soup, and the distant sound of Luffy whooping and cheering with excitement. He noticed immediately that Berry-Berry was napping in the crook of his arm (which had become her favorite napping spot on the ship) Mingle-Mango was making a racket in the coop and that Ann and Balloon were nowhere to be seen on the small boat. Zoro carefully moved the bird on him over to sleep in the coop by her sister before he stretched his arms over his head and looked over to where Luffy was making a racket.

Zoro blinked a few more times to make sure he was awake because it seemed that Luffy was holding the reigns and riding bareback on a purple shark with lighter purple polka dots.

"What's he doing?"

"Luffy wanted to play while we stopped for me to go fishing again," Dawn's voice came up from the deck to which Zoro nodded. He'd gotten used to the disembodied vessel's voice within the first day of sailing with his new crew. It had been ten days since they left Shells Town and they had already stopped to fish four times and hadn't seen an island in all that time. According to Luffy, they were just exploring on their way to the Grand Line - not lost.

Zoro had asked a day ago why a living ship couldn't even find an island and Dawn had explained simply that she wasn't a navigator - she was a ship and needed to get directions to get somewhere just like anybody else in the world.

"Ann took Balloon up to see if she could spot an island nearby where we can stock up on some fresh water and get some red meat for Luffy since he was watching Balloon and drooling while I was making the soup earlier."

After hearing this Zoro looked up into the sky and about 4000 meters up he spotted the black and white form of Balloon who was carrying Ann on his back as usual. Zoro appreciated that the little ship kept him up to date with what was going on without having to ask and went over to the wooden pot that Dawn somehow could keep heated up without fire and ladled some soup into a newly sprouted vinewood woven bowl to have some breakfast. Food was food after all, even if this was the only thing they had eaten for the last five days. The soup was as noticeably shimmery from the weird fancy eggs the chickens laid as usual and hearing that it had been Dawn who made the soup this time instead of Ann (since Luffy made everything either burnt or raw and Zoro could only burn rice or ferment it into sake nearly instantaneously somehow) Zoro decided to be very careful while he ate.

He had nearly cracked a tooth on a gold nugget Dawn had left in her last batch for "flavor" and he didn't want to go through that again. The ship didn't seem to understand that its tastes and the crew's tastes were a bit different from each other. He had just been lucky that he hadn't gotten eggshells like Ann or fishbones like Luffy (though Luffy actually did end up eatting the bones anyway.)

Once Zoro finished eating his breakfast (a gold nugget tucked into the inside of his haramaki for him to add to the crew's "treasure chest," which was just an old wooden box without a latch or lock, at a later time) he heard a very unusual whistling noise that stopped when a large mortar landed in the water close to where Luffy had been riding the shark and exploded into a surprisingly large fountain of fiery fury.

At the same time as the surprise explosion, the long, serpentine head of a sea monster that was wearing a kabuto helmet rose up out of the water and roared out an oddly glowing pink fireball attack directly towards Balloon and Ann up in the sky.

Dawn responded to the double attacks by trying to secure her current passengers but was knocked about in the explosion and ended up on a swell that washed them away from the attack in towards a smallish island that suddenly appeared as they got closer to its shore. (Zoro had just enough time to triumphantly think, 'I knew islands could appear and disappear! Take that, Johnny!') Dawn washed onto the beach on the artificially created tidal wave and landed with a heavy, painful crack.

"Yeowch!" Dawn yelped and felt the new crack in her hull widen when she shifted her lines and sails in order to try to move. With a touch of annoyance in her voice, she announced, "I think I have a crack on my starboard side."

Zoro stood up from where he had fallen, sprawled on the deck, and after looking around once asked, "Do I need to find you a ship repairman? There might be a town somewhere on this island since we're being attacked."

"I'll be fine. I just need to rest up here and eat some food and I'll have myself repaired by tomorrow." Dawn said as her figurehead grinned with clenched teeth, "I can only control two lures at once though and the shark one Luffy was playing with got hit but was able to drop him of somewhere along the shore of this island before it broke down completely so he should be fine. I have my second lure still fishing so I can get food to me but I'll keep an eye out for Ann and Balloon in case they come by and make a new one to go along with you. We need to look for Luffy before he runs into too much trouble without any backup. I'll wait here and guard the treasure while I heal up my damage."

A small bird grew out of Dawn's mast and flew down to land on top of Zoro's head. He was already jogging down the beach and casually waved his hand back in response and decided already that a ship guarding itself was probably going to be the least weird thing about this little island adventure.

The only thing Luffy had been focusing his attention on before the sudden surprise explosion had been on how much fun it was playing water rodeo (one of the words Dawn had made up that he assumed meant 'playing rough with animals') with Dawn's newly improved shark-shaped lure-y. After the explosion, he had nearly been boiled, drowned, and was sent flying off the shark into the water and nearly instantly began to sink. The last thing he could remember clearly was watching a burnt and falling apart shark swimming towards him. He didn't feel the plant shark nudge him up out of the water and out onto the closest beach before he faded away completely but he wasn't worried. A captain went down with their ship and he knew his ship wouldn't sink yet. He had full confidence that Dawn would fish him out of the water before he actually drowned.

The shark lure fell apart and broke its connection to Dawn completely almost as soon as Luffy was brought to shore. Its form now looked more like a mass of tangled burnt purple and green seaweed rather than its previous shark shape. Less than a minute later there arrived a pair of pirates armed with cutlasses and ready to loot. They looked clownishly comical with one who was tall and thin and the other short and fat instead.

"Looks like 'e drowned, don'tcha think?" the tall thin pirate asked in a rumbling deep voice as he nudged Luffy's motionless body with his foot.

The short and fat pirate expressed his disgust by covering his mouth and nose with his hand in case there was a bad smell coming from the supposed corpse and spoke with his tenor voice obviously muffled, "Check him for valuables. He could have bullets or gold in his pockets, right?"

"Why don' you check 'im? I 'ad to check the last two guys we found." The tall one argued back.

"Because touching dead bodies is gross and you don't mind touching gross things like that." The fat pirate said, still feeling disgusted at the thought.

Right afterward he felt something sharp jab suddenly into his backside and with a yelp, he spun to look behind him. He looked left and right before slightly downwards and saw a knight shorter than himself who was pointing a sharpened spear at him.

"What the?- Oh, not you again. Get out of here you little brat or I really will kill you this time!" the pirate said as he shook his cutlass threateningly at the small knight.

"Give me back my dad you stupid pirates!" The small knight shouted as she stabbed her spear at the pirate again. The long reach of the spear caused the pirate to stumble back until he stuck his foot in the middle of Luffy's chest which (since he was made of rubber) simply caved in without resistance. A gob of water spurt out of Luffy's mouth and hit his backside and it was this, rather than the angry child with the spear, which caused the fat pirate to freak out and shout in disgust.

"Ugh - disgusting! Look what mess you made me step in! I'll kill you! Help me Arry!"

Arry, the tall and thin pirate, loyally drew his own sword and the two pirates began chasing the small armored kid around the beach. The tall and short duo ran around shouting, threatening more violence and kicking sand onto Luffy as they ran around and over him in circles, the girl jumping over his body occasionally, but the pirates stepping all over him without any regard to respecting the dead.

Luffy suddenly sat up and loudly shouted, "It's so loud here! Stop stepping on me!"

The two pirates clung to each other in terror and screamed, "AHHH! It's a zombie!"

"Really? Where?" Luffy asked in excitement as he looked around.

"It's you! You idiot!" The pair screamed both angrily and terrified as they pointed their cutlasses accusingly at Luffy.

Luffy was disappointed, since seeing a zombie would have been cool. "Oh. I'm not a zombie."

The short pirate shook his sword at Luffy and yelled, "I'm gonna kill you and take whatever's in your pockets because the boss said we could loot any bodies we find on the beach!"

Gearing up for a fight, Luffy began to cock his fist back but before he could let it loose someone else attacked the short pirate instead - a small person in armor stabbed a sharpened spear at the pirate and shouted, "Stop ignoring me and tell me where my dad is!"

The short pirate ducked under the spear and wildly swung out his sword causing the sword to coil up and shoot out like a spring to increase the thrust. The strike knocked up against the helmet of the armored kid but didn't seem to harm the kid. The visor of the helmet had only been knocked up revealing the scowling face of an annoyed-looking red-haired girl with green eyes who fell onto her back and lifted her spear to block the pirate's second, weaker strike.

"Stupid!" she shouted up at the short pirate, "Why'd you stupid pirates even kidnap my dad if you're too stupid to even use his inventions right!"

Before the pirate could do anything other than make an angrier expression the kid twisted the bottom of her spear causing the sharp end to shoot forward, scratching the fat pirate deeply in his cheek as he flinched back instinctively. The pirate shouted in rage and struck down with his sword, intending to kill the girl but got hit in the head from twenty feet away by Luffy who wasn't quite sure what was going on but knew that trying to kill a kid was a jerk move.

"'Ey you! Leave Ronny alone! Stay outta this an' we'll get back to killing you soon," the tall pirate, Arry, shouted as he waved his sword threateningly in Luffy's direction but stalked forward to help his buddy take care of the little girl once and for all.

Ignoring Luffy turned out to be a bad idea though when Luffy sling-shotted his arm all the way over to the pair and punched them far away from the little kid, causing a long trench to be formed in the sand. The two pirates stumbled back to their feet but when Luffy raised his fist again for another round the two decided if the crazy beach girl now had backup like Luffy it would be wiser to run away. The fled further down the beach, cresting a sand dune and were soon out of sight.

Luffy looked down to where the girl was still sitting in the sand and with stars in his eyes said, "Your armor and spear are so cool! Let me borrow the spear!"

Luffy made grasping motions with his hands, indicating he was eager to snatch the spear away but the girl pulled it closer to herself and stood up to her full height (though was still a foot shorter than Luffy) and said, "Who're you? I've never seen anyone who could stretch like you."

"I'm Monkey D Luffy and I'm going to be King of the Pirates!" he said proudly to which the girl immediately showed her distaste for by trying to stab Luffy in his face with her spear which he easily dodged.

She continued to take a stab at him all while she shouted and yelled at him, "Ugh - a pirate! I hate pirates! You stink! You're mean! You kidnapped my dad! Give him back! Tell your boss to give him back!"

"Hey! I don't have a boss! I'm the captain of my crew!" Luffy argued with the little girl and ducked around another spear strike with a twist that would have dislocated the spine of anyone who wasn't made out of rubber.

"No, you aren't, you stupid pirate. That jerk Ganzack is the only captain on this island!" the girl argued back before suddenly her expression changed from anger to surprise and a split second later after that stopped stabbing at him and with an excited grin on her face she said, "Ah-ha! I understand now! There's finally some mutiny in the ranks! You want to be captain and got thrown overboard and now you want to kick Ganzack's stupid butt in revenge, right?"

"No. I want to eat." Luffy said bluntly and turned to walk away from the girl.

"Wait!" she said and feeling desperate for help without thinking blurted out, "I'll let you use my spear and give you all my food if you help me find my dad, he's who I treasure the most in the world!"

"Really?!" Luffy shouted excitedly until his stomach let out a loud growl and he hunched over in misery, "Can we eat first? I'm really, really hungry."

"Fine, follow me. You can eat first and then we'll go," the girl began to walk down the beach, leading the way as Luffy followed behind, excited over the promise of some food. They walked a little past a kilometer down the beach, opposite from the direction the other two pirates had gone to a combination home and shop outside of a distant town with a faded sign hanging by the door that simply read "Herring's Curiosities" with the name Herring crossed out in black paint and the words 'Dead Man's' freshly painted in yellow beneath it.

Upon seeing the sign the girl scowled and with her spear unhooked the loops of the sign hanging on the hooks above the door in order to take it down, holding it under her arm. As she unlocked the shop she muttered, "I'll get Geel and Iaana for painting this later. I don't care if they go crying to their mamas either."

Once she opened the door to the home-shop Luffy followed behind her and began to look around oohing and ahhing over the different objects around the shop. Sand had been scattered and tracked over the majority of the floors and the only things left on the shelves were a few little crab themed clocks, music boxes, and wind-up crab toys scattered around otherwise barren shelves. If there were other nautical themed things they had been removed long ago.

The most amazing thing in the shop, however, was a pair of playsets in the middle of the room. The first playset was modeled after a castle and had three five-foot-tall mannequins standing out in front in elaborate costumes: a queen wearing a beautiful blue gown and handheld fan inlaid with shining metal and sparkling stones, a king with a scepter as ornate as the fan the queen held who wore a velveteen crown and a knight stripped of his armor and weapon.

The second playset had Luffy all over it. A pirate fort (indicated by the skull and crossbones flag raised above it) that had not just three, but five mannequins standing in the front. A mannequin pirate navigator wearing orange and white stripes that came with a spyglass and compass, a mannequin pirate gunner in a red bandana with a real black powder keg and cannon wicks, a mannequin pirate bosun wearing a leather belt and pouch with a little cat-o-nine tails, a mannequin everyman pirate with an eyepatch and little cutlass and best of all a mannequin captain in a fancy feathered hat with a cool pirate-themed hat pin in it, red captain long coat and a treasure map. Luffy had already squeezed himself into the captain's coat and was poking at the eyepatch pirate with the spyglass by the time the girl had realized he wasn't following her and went back to find him again.

Seeing that he was playing around she puffed up indignantly and yelled, "Hey - we came here for you to eat not for you to play with the merchandise. Leave that alone, my dad will need to sell it once he comes back so we can have some money while he builds up inventory again."

Luffy shucked off the play captain's coat but didn't stop poking at the mannequins as he absently said, "You sure have fun looking pirate toys, my brothers and I just got ours from the stuff people threw out. You should build a tall tree fort like we did!"

"A tree fort? That would be so cool!" the girl said getting excited before remembering her mission and visibly shrunk into herself as she said, "Never mind that! I have the food - here. Eat up so we can go to Ganzack's base and rescue my dad."

She handed Luggy a small pack of seed cakes, five dried crabs, a pair of hard-boiled quail eggs, six strips of snake jerky and a single fresh oyster. Luffy stuffed the seed cakes in his mouth even as he complained, "Aww, you don't have any meat?"

"Of course I don't. Meat is expensive you stupid pirate," the girl said crossly, clanking a little bit as she crossed her armored arms in front of herself impatiently.

Luffy polished off the rest of the food (including the shells) and with another pout said, "I'm still hungry."

"We'll get you more food but only after you finish helping me. You seem a little stupid so I'll take you back to Ganzack's base but I think you can probably beat him if we get caught," she straightened up and said, "You have my word as a future pira- er I mean my word as a future knight that I will fight without fear. I'm the toughest kid on the entire island after all!"

"Can you dress up in one of these?" Luffy asked as he pointed at the little mannequins in pirate clothes.

The girl crossed her arms and said, "No way! Even if I still liked pirates I'd still wear the knight armor if I was gonna invade a pirate base. As my dad says, 'Medaka may be a ruffian but Medaka isn't stupid' after all."

"Wow, we should probably pick up Medaka on our way to the base then, shouldn't we?" Luffy said, feeling proud of himself for coming up with such a great idea.

"You stupid pirate - I'm Medaka," she snapped and pointed out the door, "Let's go. The sooner we find my dad the sooner you can eat some more."

Luffy went. He was still playing with the little toy spyglass, had the cool hatpin stuck in his straw hat as he ran after Medaka but she wasn't scolding at him over it so he knew it was fine. With any luck, he'd get more food (maybe even real meat) at some point during this adventure after all.

"~Do what I want, 'cause a pirate is free ~ I am a pirate! ~Yar har, fiddle di dee ~ Being a pirate is alright with me, ~Do what I want 'cause a pirate is free, ~I am a pirate!" He cheerily began singing off-tune as he followed behind Medaka to which she tried to ignore because if there was one thing she had learned from the pirates now living on her island it was that pirates were awful. Even if it was only their singing.

Fwaaash!

The sound of an explosion down at sea level was just enough warning to allow Balloon and Ann to avoid the follow-up attack from below. The last place Ann had expected to be attacked was 4000 meters above the East Blue but the pink flamed attack was dodged by Balloon, who swooped out of the way just in time. Ann turned her brass telescope in the direction that the attack came from and saw a sea monster wearing a kabuto helmet - its mouth was still expelling pink smoke from the blast.

It didn't seem to be a sea king but instead a magic familiar to the oddly armored man who was standing on top of the helmet of the sea monster. It was probably a magic-using pirate the same as Spiel had been - one with a magical animal companion like herself but a water-based one instead of a sky one like hers.

Fortunately, this particular magic-user didn't seem to be using transformative magic as Spiel had specialized in. Being up on Balloon's back gave Ann a lot more magic (all bird-themed, which in her opinion wasn't much use in a fight, but otherwise was useful in other ways) but it also gave Balloon amplified magical abilities that Ann's own magic core powered up in return. A roc's essence (feathers, blood or otherwise) could amplify any magician's own powers but a roc who's own powers were amplified could do very interesting things.

Balloon's beak opened wide and what appeared to be a beam of white light blasted down at the magic-user and sea monster, though the sea monster evaded the attack thanks to its partner's direction.

Things like blasting compressed magic beams at their opponents.

Balloon's feathers hardened and glinted in the light like sharpened knives before he twisted into a dizzyingly fast barrel roll causing the sharp feathers to shoot down at their attackers who once again dodged and began swimming away in a single direction in a seemingly desperate move to escape the aerial attacks.

Or turning their feathers into razor-sharp knives.

After soaring upward, Balloon and Ann followed their attacker and target by dropping out of the sky at a high speed directly towards them. All in all, Ann decided that she and Balloon were doing fairly well for their first magic battle since their run-in with Spiel - at least up until they ran into the magic barrier surrounding the island that the other magic user and familiar had ducked behind.

It felt like they had flown into a wall of thick glue. Ann could spot a previously invisible island now - the barrier had been hiding it completely and now that she and Balloon were stuck in it they could finally see through it. Instead of rapidly crashing down into the ocean below she and Balloon were falling like they were in a waterfall of cold syrup. They were going down but not very quickly.

The voice of the armor-wearing, magic-using pirate was loud enough to reach her high up in the air and he sounded both like he was kicking up a fuss about her crew showing up and with a laugh was also utterly delighted in his win against Ann and Balloon.

"Kanininini! That's what you get for underestimating me, you stupid witch! I have all the important skills in the world: science, magic, and battle ability! Nothing and no one can stop me now! I will be the greatest of all! The next pirate king even!"

Balloon voiced his disagreement with the pirate's egocentric statement with an angry 'grshaaa' and Ann echoed her agreement with his statement as she boldly said, "Not a chance! My captain is the one who's going to be the pirate king. He even took a magic vow with me to do so!"

The magic-using pirate scoffed and said, "Your captain will be dealt with soon enough, witch. He'll be trapped on my island with nowhere to escape. I've incapacitated his ship and that scraggly beast tamer of yours has already been dealt with thanks to my bomb. Once I bury you and your pet under the edge of my barrier I'll have all the time I need in the world to crush your captain before I leave this place for good."

"And what's the name of this self-proclaimed future pirate king from this sea of schemers?" Ann taunted from above.

"I know better than to fall for that trick, witch. I'm no fool that just started practicing magic recently," he said with a haughty expression on his face. Ann and Balloon were now low enough stuck in the barrier for Ann to make up the details of this magic user's appearance more clearly.

He was a normal-sized man who's crab-like armor looked even more ridiculous up close than it had been from a distance. The armor on his back even included large crab claw-shaped shoulder gauntlets. He was wearing blue pants and a blue ankle long cape also. He had long purple hair that was tied up into a ponytail and a pointy purple beard. He had red rings around each of his eyes like a malevolent panda and an X-shaped scar on his left temple. On the top of his head, he wore a black tricorn hat with what Ann assumed to be was his pirate emblem on it. This symbol also had crab claws.

He stood full of confidence on top of the head of his sea monster companion who had a humped body, four flippers, and a long, flexible neck sticking out of the water. Its jaws alone looked large enough to swallow a human being whole. Its sole accessory was a plated kabuto helmet, emblazoned with his magician partner's jolly roger and also amusingly enough adorned with crab claws so it matched the crab aesthetic of its partner as well.

Ann responded to his honestly very wise decision by saying, "Well it looks like we're at an impasse. You won't tell me your name and I can't just leave my crew stuck on this hidden island of yours. I'll just tell you now that my captain hits problems like you pretty hard. Once I get free though you'll wish I had been the one to take you out of commission."

The pirate scoffed at Ann's statement and said, "Don't be stupid, witch. This is the strongest magical barrier I've ever made. I've been growing it for six months already. It keeps outsider eyes off the island, keeps the people here nice and docile like cute little sheep, and traps anyone with even the slightest amount of magical abilities trying to enter at the edge where I can feed them to Plesiosaurus here."

The sea monster smiled it's own greedy grin and opened its unhinged jaw like a snake, accidentally tipping both its helmet and the armored pirate down into the water below. It snapped its mouth shut at the pirate's shout of alarm and looked down into the water with concern in its eyes. The pirate broke through the surface of the sea and while treading in the water glared up at the sea monster and shouted, "What did I say! Don't open your mouth that wide when you have the helmet on! Get that helmet back on and eat this witch and her bird once they get stuck on the knoll. I've got plans to complete."

The pirate butterfly stroked to the shore and to Ann's amusement his armor made him look like a crab scuttling in the water. He may have been a fairly good black magic user but he obviously wasn't used to fighting a magic battle. You never left a field you created if you didn't know what type of magic the other person had. She pulled a feather from her pouch and went to work in unsticking herself and Balloon from this web with her own spell. She was sure Luffy and Zoro could handle themselves for a little while.

Zoro made it all the way to the island town without seeing any sign of either Luffy or Ann. As he was just stepping into town though a pair of teenagers about thirteen years old or so came running full speed from somewhere behind him and tripped over each other just as they passed him by. Their hard landing had them spilling the buckets of yellow paint and the brushes they had been holding all over themselves and over the cobblestone street.

The two teens spotted Zoro standing above them from where they lay fallen in the road. They both had unruly blond hair though the one on the left had darker skin and dark brown eyes while the one on the right had freckles and lighter brown eyes.

The kid on the right outright glared at Zoro and accused, "Hey you tripped us you jerk! Just wait 'til I tell my mom!"

The looped chain around Zoro's harakami clinked a little bit as he ghosted his hand over his swords and with a hard look in his eyes asked, "Did I?"

His friend, having slightly more self-preservation skills than his friend did, elbowed the freckled kid hard and said, "No sir, our mistake. We were fleeing for our lives away from the blood-red beast's lair and Iaana's imagination was overreacting. Right Iaana?"

The false accuser agreed right away and said, "Yes, my mistake Geel. I most definitely tripped over myself on the cobblestone path."

"The blood-red beast? Is this beast known for attacking or blowing up ships who wander too close to this island?" Dawn asked from where she was settled up in Zoro's hair which caused the two teens to startle in alarm. She had been camouflaged pretty well up there since her lure was as marimo green as Zoro's own hair.