When I came to, I still had the headache, and for a scary moment, I couldn't remember anything. I couldn't remember who I was, or where I was from. I couldn't remember whether I was a boy or a girl, and I couldn't remember how old I was. My memory was a total blank.
And then my headache cleared and my memories flooded back.
Yes, that's right. I was Yuril Emilia Lily Rose Artwaltz, from the streets of New York, New York, or the Big Apple, or whatever the hell you wanted to call it. My mom, a single, divorced woman by the name of Elena Magdalena, had been murdered in our small apartment, and when I came home from class that day in my Sophomore year of high school to find her corpse lying mangled on her bed, I'd freaked out, grabbed a few necessary survival items and forced them into my suitcase (namely, two week's worth of clothes, toiletries, my iPod, my laptop, the corresponding chargers for them, and the $100 I'd been saving), called the cops, and ran from home.
Why'd I run away when all it did was land me as the top suspect in my mother's murder until the real killer was caught by total accident?
Simple. After all the reading and anime-watching I'd done (yeah, I was kind of an otaku), I'd learned that orphanages were equivalent to hell for kids. And since I didn't have any other family except for mom, who was now dead (curse Dad for getting lost at sea!), an orphanage was exactly where I was headed. I was not going to let that happen, not for the life of me.
And so started my life as a street delinquent.
Somehow I managed to hold my own on the streets. I learned to fight under the instruction of a middle-aged homeless guy called Cracked-Up Chuck, which was due to the fact that he was never seen without—yep, you guessed it—crack. Despite the fact that he was constantly high, he was actually a very nice guy, and willing to do whatever it took to help a friend.
The day Cracked-Up Chuck and I first met was a hot day in my first summer. Summer had started not too long after my mom's murder, and I was starving, scavenging food from garbage cans. I know. It was about as fun as it sounded, which wasn't fun at all. But somehow I was still alive, and by avoiding the police, I managed not to get sent to 1) jail for questioning on my mom's death or 2) the orphanage. Anyway, I was little more than skin-and-bones, sitting on the sidewalk with one hand on my suitcase, looking hopefully up at the passersby, wondering if someone would be kind enough to spare a few dollars, which would be more than enough to buy a meal at McDonald's.
Sure, there was kind of a manhunt going on for me, but most people had only seen my face for a few minutes on TV, and said face had already become very different due to starvation.
But instead of nice citygoers, I got angry thugs.
These guys were a group of three school kids I'd beaten up the week before, back when I still had the strength to beat people up. They'd been picking on an innocent girl, and I never liked guys who tried to... do what they were doing to her. So I handed their asses to them on a silver platter and walked away, leaving the girl to wonder who the hell I was and the guys to collect dust on the streets.
"Hey, you bitch!" the lead guy growled. He wore your typical gangster get-up: Baggy pants, black coat, white shirt, backwards cap—you know the drill. The two behind him were dressed similarly, plus shades and minus the cap.
They looked like total idiots.
"This is payback for last week, bitch!" Ugly Number One, the guy on the left, drawled.
"Yeah, man, we won't let you get away with what you did to us," Ugly Number Three, the guy on the right, slurred.
"Prepare for a major ass-beatin'!" Ugly Number Two, the ringleader, rumbled. A sadistic glint sparked in his eye and I glared up at him.
"Oh, so you make yourselves feel better by beating up the weak and those unable to fight back?" I hissed, oozing venom. Man did I hate people like that. "Hell's got a special place for you three."
"Leave her alone, punks," a voice behind the lamppost I was sitting against said.
I turned in surprise. "Who are you?"
"C-C-C-Cracked-Up Chuck!" one of the thugs gulped.
"I heard he's crazy."
"He's got a freakin' black belt in karate, jujitsu, and taekwondo!"
"Let's get out of here!"
And with that, I never saw them again.
***
Anyway, immediately upon waking up and regaining my memories, I noticed that the room I was in was unlike anything I was used to. For one thing, the bed felt über-comfy, though that might've been because I hadn't slept on a proper bed for about two years. Also, the entire place rocked. Which made me feel like throwing up.
When I opened my eyes after the initial sick-in-my-stomach feeling passed (which probably took a good hour), I noticed the last weird thing about my room. It had a single window which wasn't actually a window; it was a porthole. Like on an old-time ship. A porthole. And it overlooked the freakin' ocean!
"WHY AM I ON A SHIP?!" I bellowed in shock, my eyes popping out of my head comically.
I could tell it was nighttime because the stars were showing outside, and a single oil lamp burned on a table behind me, so I must not have been out for too long. Thought that was weird, too. As a result of major air pollution, I had never seen stars before. Just looking at the stars felt like a dream come true. They were so pretty, and there were so many... it blew my mind. Seeing stars on a screen and seeing them in real life was nothing alike.
Great. Now I sound like a sappy girl.
I was brought out of my thoughts with the sound of the opening of a door.
I looked in that direction and blinked. The person who had just come into the room with me was a somewhat familiar, very cute orange haired girl with... with gigantic melons that served as her chest. Normally that would just look ugly on a girl, but this one's chest only made her look hotter. I blushed a little.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"My name's Nami," she said with a warm smile. "Who are you?"
"Yuril, Artwaltz D. Yuril," I said. I wasn't sure why I'd put my last name first, or changed my middle name to the initial D., but whatever I said made her blink.
"Oh, really? You've got the middle initial D. like my captain, huh?" Nami asked curiously. "Huh..."
"Yeah, I do," I nodded. "Who's your captain?"
Her answer made my jaw drop.
"Monkey D. Lucy."
No way, no way, no way... I stared at her, eyes wide and my jaw so low it was touching the floor. Monkey D. Luffy? But that's a fictional character! Hold on, didn't she just say her name was Nami? Come to think of it, she looks exactly like a real-life version of the Nami in One Piece, the navigator of the Straw Hats' ship... And I'm on a freakin' boat! WHAT THE HELL'S GOING ON HERE?
She blinked and waved a hand in front of my face. "Hey, Yuril, you in there?"
I decided with an option that made sense.
"You're very good at cosplaying," I told her.
Nami tilted her head, clearly confused.. "Eh? Cosplaying? What's that?"
I frowned. "You... you don't know what cosplaying is?"
"No. It sounds like some sort of game, though..."
"Oh, damnit!" I cursed. "This is not good... tell me, where am I?"
The girl blinked, then smiled. "You're on my crew's ship, the Going Merry. We just got it from our newest crew member, Usopp's friend Kaya."
My brain raced. Okay, so somehow I was in the world of One Piece, on the Going Merry. Also, it was probably sometime between the Syrup Village Arc and the Baratie Arc in the timeline, based on what Nami had just said and the fact that she was here and not on her way to Arlong Park.
"Yep this is definitely a dream," I decided. "Nami, slap me."
"Um... what?"
"Slap me. Across the face. This is a dream and I'm gonna wake up from it."
She raised an eyebrow and shrugged. "Okaaaay..."
She slapped me across the face.
WHACK!
"YOWCH! THAT HURT!" I yelped, tending to a reddening bruise on my cheek. "WHY DOES IT HURT?! YOU DON'T FEEL PAIN IN DREAMS!"
"Well, unless I'm having the same dream as you, you're not dreaming," Nami told me, sounding slightly amused.
It was then that Aes's words came back to me: Very well. I suppose I'll have to prove it to you by sending you to the Luffyverse now.
By the Luffyverse, did he mean the world of One Piece?
"So, uh, can I meet Luffy? I need to talk to him about something," I said, thinking fast.
Nami frowned in confusion again. "Luffy? I don't know any Luffy. But my captain's Lucy..."
"...Say what now?"
"My captain's Lucy. You can see her."
Lucy? Her? ...The Hell? I didn't know what she was going on about, but I decided to play along.
"Okay, take me to... Lucy," I nodded.
"OI! LUCY! THE GIRL FROM THE SKY WANTS TO MEET WITH YOU!" she shouted. "AND HER NAME'S YURIL!"
I heard much scurrying outside the room, and then the door to the infirmary was flung open to reveal another girl, as well as a quick glimpse of the deck of the ship and the ocean.
The new girl was short and had a bandaged-up chest. How did I know this? She was shamelessly wearing a low v-cut red vest, which was luckily buttoned up. Her blue shorts only barely passed her thighs, and I wondered if this girl cared about her appearance at all. Her eyes were a beautiful hazel, and a straw hat with a red band strapped around it perched on her onyx black, long hair. A thin scar cut across her eye, but somehow that only made her cuter.
I once again found myself blushing as I looked at the girl. "Stop being such a freakin' pervert, Yuril!" I muttered to myself, tapping on my head.
That was when I realized something. This girl looked exactly like the pictures online I'd seen of a female Monkey D. Luffy. Somehow... somehow I really had fallen into the world of One Piece, but Luffy was a freakin' GIRL!
"WHAT IN HELL'S GOING ON!?" I freaked in my head.
"Hey, mystery angel!" she cheered. "You're finally awake!"
"How... Whu..." I stuttered. Wow, such great linguistic skills, Yuril.
"That's Lucy," Nami told me, side-eying the girl. "She's stuck on believing that you're an angel, since you fell from the sky and all."
"I... fell from the sky?"
"So are you an angel?" Lucy asked, literally jumping up and down in excitement. "Are you are you are you?"
"Sheesh, take a breath, and no, I'm not." I said, sweatdropping.
"Told you she wasn't," a man's voice muttered. And in stepped the most bad-ass guy I'd ever seen.
He was tall and muscular, and his body was heavily scarred. His oily head was topped with a tangle of green hair, and his face was fixed in a bored, sleepy expression. Three swords hung by his side. He wore a dirty, white shirt and dark green pants. A green bandana... no... haramaki was tied around his left wrist.
"No way," I said in awe. "Roronoa Zoro?"
He scowled. "Who the hell are you, and why did you fall from the sky?" He sounded exactly like the Japanese voice actor, if he had an English accent and spoke English.
"The name's Artwaltz D. Yuril," I said, and with a smile, I shook both Lucy's and Zoro's hands. Lucy's was small, feminine, but slightly callused, whereas Zoro's was thick and sweaty, and heavily callused. I gritted my teeth and winced. Zoro's grip was really tight. "I didn't even know I fell from the sky. Say, did a suitcase fall with me?"
All three of them looked to my left. "Oh, you mean that thing?" Nami asked, pointing to a very familiar black suitcase leaning up against the infirmary bed.
I grinned wider. "That's the one! Thank goodness this baby's here with me..."
"Why?" Lucy wondered. "Is it important? Is it an angel?"
I sweatdropped again. "Er... no. It's not an angel."
"Is it worth money?!" Nami shouted eagerly, her eyes changing into belli signs like in the anime.
Zoro and I both sweatdropped at that, though in my case it was now a double-sweatdrop.
"Ah... no." I told them. "Actually, it's pretty much been my home for the past two years."
"Your home? That thing?" The green-haired swordsman said skeptically. "Doesn't look big enough to be a home for a cat."
"I've been living in the streets, OK?" I grumbled. "All my necessary survival items are in that suitcase, so as far as I'm concerned, yes, it's my home."
"You live on the streets?" exclaimed an awed Lucy. "Wow, you must be really strong!"
"...No, not really. I mean, I can hold my own in a fight, but..." I decided to change the subject. "Anyway, you guys are pirates, right?"
"Yeah, how'd you know?" Lucy asked excitedly.
"...I can see into the future," I told her after thinking for a second.
"EH!? YOU MEAN YOU'RE A FORTUNE TELLER! COOOLL!"
Nami and Zoro frowned at me, looking like they didn't buy into all this.
"Okay, um, first of all, the last island you visited was Gecko Island, right?" I began. It was kinda rhetoric. "And there you defeated the notorious Captain Kuro, who was supposed to have been killed by the Marines three years ago. In reality, however, he went into hiding and began scheming to steal Miss Kaya's fortune. You met Usopp-san there. Also, before that, you guys defeated Buggy the Clown in Orange Town, and before that Lucy-chan saved Zoro-san from being executed at the Marine Base on Shell's Island."
I wasn't sure why I added the honorifics to the ends of their names. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that random Japanese words were mixed in with the English ones?
Zoro glared at me suspiciously. "How'd you know all that?!"
"I told you, I can see into the future. I... had a vision."
"Hey, you're awesome!" Lucy exclaimed, eyes sparkling anime-style.
I blushed a little. I've never received much praise, except from Cracked-Up Chuck whenever I got stronger. "Oh, and you're either just sailing now, or you're heading to the Baratie."
"What? What's the Baratie?" Lucy asked curiously.
"A famous sea restaurant."
Lucy's stomach growled. "RESTAURANT!? I can taste the food from here..."
I burst into laughter. Even Zoro managed to crack a smile. I guess that, girl or boy, Luffy is Luffy.
"Hey, you should join my crew, Yuril!"
I blinked and looked at Lucy, who'd just spoken. "Really?"
"Yeah! You could be our psychic!"
And that was how I became a part of the great Straw Hat Pirates. Who knows what awkward situations will come out of this, with Luffy being a girl and all, but this is my life now, and somehow or another, I know it will work out. A quote I'd heard a long time ago said, It always turns out good in the end. If it's not good, it's not the end.