Two days into our trip, and the weather was going nutso again. Not the insane storm kind of crazy, luckily, but the wind kept randomly stopping and restarting like a broken engine, forcing us to drop anchor until it blew again. Nami was more annoyed than Zoro whenever Sanji does his 'love-cook' thing.
"We've lost the wind AGAIN!" she complained after the sails went slack for the nth time. "If this keeps up, just getting to Little Garden will take forever! This stupid ocean's gonna drive me insane!"
"That's a short trip where you're concerned," I mumbled.
Cue the demoness. "WHAT WAS THAT, YURIL!?" She sighed and rubbed her temples. "Anyway, we won't be moving for a while."
Vivi frowned. "We're starting to run out of time to go."
"Try not to worry so much!" Nami told her, forcing a smile again and patting the desert princess reassuringly. "We're going to get to Alabasta as quickly as we can. The wind'll pick up soon!"
I nodded, stuffing my hands in the pockets of my leather jacket. "You can count on us, Vivi-chan!" I agreed, grinning widely. "Don't you worry about a thing! Just relax and let us handle the grunt work. You've done some amazing things for just a peaceful princess, but now it's time to take a little break from carrying the sky, yeah?"
The three of us were standing on the upper part of the ship, in the walking area between a railing and the kitchen, bathrooms, and boy's cabins, and below Nami's precious mikan trees. The navigator had learned her lesson. Since leaving Whiskey Peak, she'd watched the Log Pose with the stamina of an Olympic athlete. Vivi had been worrying her ass off. I'd been in the lookout post... well, looking out, as was my main job. On the other hand, the rest of the Straw Hats... well, what happened next can give you a pretty good idea of what they'd been doing for the past two days.
"Alright, everyone!" Lucy announced, sliding into view on the lower deck and throwing her arms up in the air. "It's time to fish!"
Carue stuck his wings up as well and gave two quacks of agreement.
"Hey guys, do any of you know where the bait went?" Sanji asked with a bored look on his face as he held up a mostly-empty bucket. One little worm was still wiggling inside it.
"Huh? Bait?" asked my idiot... er, I mean, captain. "Oh, you mean the stuff in there? I ate it."
I felt myself go green just at the thought and Usopp, who had been lazing around aimlessly moments before, sweatdropped.
"You ATE it!?" he shrilled, his jaw dropping. "Ew! Those were bugs! "
As we watched, Lucy groped around in the bucket with her rubbery fingers until she found the last worm, then grabbed it and popped it in her mouth like it was a piece of candy. "Is that right? They were goooood."
The sniper's eyes nearly popped out of his head and my face twisted in disgust.
"Oh, yuck!" he cried. "That's gross! "
"Oi, how are we supposed to fish now that you've scarfed down all our bait?" I shouted with a tic-pulse as Sanji swooned at her "bravery" and "limitless horizons".
"Let's try using this," she suggested, bringing out a ball of something brown that I didn't even want to identify.
"I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS AND I DON'T WANNA KNOW," I shot back, "BUT YOU CAN'T FISH WITH THAT! "
"Those are some picky fish. Well, why don't we just use him?" She pointed at Carue, the oversized pet duck that Vivi owned.
"Hey, that's not too bad of an idea. He's too big to be cute, so he doesn't really have a purpose, does he?"
"Y-Yuril-chan!" Vivi protested in panic while Carue was busy going crazy, trying to get away from Sanji and Lucy, who had started chasing the king-sized animal around the mainmast in endless circles. Unfortunately for them, the chef accidentally stepped on a napping Marimo's face, and he woke up in a rage.
"Ow!" he groaned, glaring at the idiots. "Dammit! Knock it off, you idiots!"
Nami sweatdropped and hung her head in defeat. "I guess it's too much to ask for YOU GUYS TO BE WORRIED!" She slammed the railing for emphasis, effectively stopping Carue, Lucy, and Sanji in their tracks.
Lucy was confused. "What should we be worried about?"
"Ah! NAMI-CHWAN is so beautiful when she's angry!" Sanji glamorized.
"Oh, come on," Nami groaned, facepalming.
Vivi blinked. "It's odd. For a woman with a 30,000,000 belli bounty, your captain doesn't seem to be a particularly terrifying pirate. And you all act almost like a family."
I shrugged. "We are nakama, after all."
The local redhead shook her head and put her hands on her hips. "Yeah. I know that it's really tough to imagine, but she's actually beaten some of the really big names out there! Like 'Saw Nose' Arlong, the fishman who was determined to rule the East Blue with an iron fist. And Don Krieg, pirate commodore. Also, although nobody else ever knew about it except us, Captain Kuro, who was notorious for his cunning plans and speed."
"Don't forget Captain Buggy the Clown," I added, shuddering at the thought of the disgusting creatures. "He ate the Chop-Chop Fruit, which allowed him to split apart his body into multiple sections, which he can then control at will. Like how Lucy's immune to blunt attacks, he's immune to things like swords and scythes."
Nami blinked. "Oh, yeah! And he showed up at Loguetown just before we reached Reverse Mountain, trying to execute Lucy! He was really pissed off. He almost got away with it, too, but at the last second, Yuril summoned a huge hurricane and saved her."
The ex-Baroque Works agent gulped. "She can summon a hurricane ? She's that powerful?"
"Clowns are scary," I whimpered, turning blue while Vivi and Nami sweatdropped.
Zoro must've actually been listening to me, because he decided to speak up, too. "You guys left one out. She took down this Marine bastard brandishing a huge axe instead of a hand."
"Oh yeah, I remember now," Nami said with a nod. "Axe-Hand Morgan."
Vivi's eyebrows shot up. "Axe-Hand Morgan? I've heard of him. Wasn't he the Marine captain feared throughout the East Blue for his cruel supremacy?" We nodded and she turned to Lucy in surprise. "You defeated someone as strong as him?"
Lucy, who was trying to wrestle Carue into submission, blinked and looked up at us. "Ah, the axe-hand ossan! ...Oh yeah, I wonder what happened to the girl I was with."
Both me and Vivi were confused. "Girl?" we said in unison. I hadn't remembered there being any girls in the first few episodes other than the restaurant owner and her little daughter. Well, and "Iron Club" Alvida, but I doubt she really qualifies as a girl.
In the captain's musings and Sanji and Usopp's surprise, Carue took his chance, broke free of their grasp, and fled to safety.
"I wonder if she's still at that Marine base," Lucy said.
"Who's 'that girl?'" I asked, mystified.
"Oi, there's something that Yuril-chan doesn't know!" Nami gasped in mock-horror. "It must be the end of the world!"
Usopp and Zoro snickered while my eye twitched at her.
She blinked. "Don't ya know? You're a psychic, aren't you? Her name's Cory. She's my friend! She's kinda chubby and has pink hair, and she helped me free Zoro from that Marine base!" The swordsman in question didn't seem too amused at the thought that he'd been captured, then saved by two girls.
I stared at her. "Uh... you don't mean Coby by any chance, do you?"
"Coby? I don't know anyone named Coby. Ha! Sounds like a wimp."
Okay... so that meant Lucy wasn't the only one in this universe who'd been swapped genders. Coby was now Cory, a girl. I wondered if that would lead to a Helmeppo/Cory pairing down the road, then shuddered at the thought. Scratch that, that would just be weird.
The wind picked up soon after that, ending our little conversation. I went back up to the lookout post, Sanji manned the steering rudder, I assumed Lucy went back to her special spot on the figurehead, Zoro fell asleep again, and Usopp played around, as usual. He dug out a spyglass from somewhere, leaned out over the Merry, and peered through it to the horizon.
"Ah! There they are!" he laughed. "The millions of people at Little Garden, all welcoming I, Captain Usopp-sama! You can smell the fragrant breeze of young girls blowing their wild kisses!" He lowered his voice to make it more "manly", and narrated, " Honestly, I know I'm a man among men but you can't fall in love with me, girl! Not my fault if you get burned."
I smirked at him from the crow's nest. "It's not that they can't, they just wouldn't. Besides, don't you already have a thing for Kaya, that girl who lives in the mansion at Syrup Village?"
He blushed furiously. "I do not! How do you know about her, anyway?"
"Psychic, remember?"
"Oh, right. I always forget about that..."
"Thanks for that insightful statement, Captain Obvious."
"Oi! He's not the captain, I'm the captain!" shouted Lucy.
I sweatdropped. "That's not what we're talking about, Lucy-chan."
"Are you guys stupid?" Zoro asked, munching on an apple, having momentarily woken up to get the red fruit.
My eye twitched. "That's coming from you?"
"Who're you calling 'stupid?'" Usopp shrilled, pounding on the fo'c'sle angrily. That's sailor speak for "forecastle", by the way.
Inside the kitchen, since she was studying a map Vivi was drawing for her, Nami's voice shouted out at us. "Shut up, already! Can't you guys just be a little quieter? We're trying to work here!"
Usopp grumbled something about navigators being bossier than captains, and poked his head up to glare through the porthole window at her. Then suddenly his expression changed. I asked him what was going on in there, and when he replied that Sanji was making a snack, I grinned and hurried down the main mast. I was getting better at climbing the thing, only falling once or twice a day now. Luckily, I always managed to make a cushion of water to catch me when I fall, so I don't get hurt.
Usopp and I burst into the kitchen in time to see the elegantly dressed cook place something that looked fruity on the table in front of Nami and Vivi, as well as a cup of tea. I had no idea what it was, but it smelled absolutely divine. Its aroma was sweet and summery, a perfect match for the warm day.
"Today's dessert is a dish of tarte aux poires," Sanji was telling them. "Literally, that means 'tart with pears.' Please enjoy."
We all gasped in delight. "Wow! Looks delicious!"
The love cook's eyes immediately turned to hearts. "Ah, Yuril-chan! I was just about to call you for dessert!" Suddenly he glared at Usopp, making me sweatdrop. He pointed to the counter. "Yours is over there."
Usopp clapped in anticipation and ran to his dessert.
Sanji blinked. "Oi, where's Lucy-chan?"
"Isn't she at the figurehead?" I asked.
"No, I asked her to bring up some water so I could take a shower," Nami corrected me. "She should be at the water-drawing machine."
"Okay, I'll keep her dessert warm until she's done."
"So that's why she's been so quiet," I mused, sitting at the table and taking a bite of the tarte aux poires. My eyes lit up. It wasn't delicious, it was divine! It had just the right amount of natural sweetness blended in with thick syrup or something like that, and unlike most desserts, it was warm enough that the pears simply melted on your tongue. It tasted like heaven in a cup!
But of course, just after I said Lucy was being quiet, there was the sound of a small explosion. I nearly choked on my tarte aux poires in surprise, though I really should've expected it.
I coughed up the stuff that went down the wrong pipe, then wiped my mouth. "Maybe not," I said weakly.
"Are you okay?" Vivi asked me worriedly.
"I'm fine!" I assured her. "It's gonna take more than that to kill me."
"I guess so," she said uncertainly.
Lucy's voice came from outside, sounding kind of impressed. "Damn, that scared me! That thing's really dangerous!"
"What?" Nami asked as we rushed out of the kitchen and onto the walkway above the deck. "What happened?" As she asked that, Usopp leaned far over the railing and looked at the smoking underside of the staircase, as well as Lucy's pouting face. He screamed in anger.
"Agh! Lucy!" he yelled, tic-pulsing. "How the hell did you break that!?"
I peered over the railing, too. The door to the cupboard under the stairs, which housed the water-drawing machine, was wide open and revealing the broken contraption. The water drawer was like a bicycle, and we had to get someone else to peddle it beforehand if we wanted to get water for something big like a shower.
My eye-twitched. "Oi, Lucy, that's important, ya know!"
Usopp jumped down to the lower deck and landed lightly.
The straw hatted girl shrugged. "I was just trying to get the water to go faster."
The sniper checked out the wreckage, rummaging through the many pieces of the broken machine. "Oi, oi," he reported, "the belt's burned through." He held up the charred chain for us all to see while Nami, expression shadowed behind her carrot-top, jumped to the lower deck, too.
"Yeah. Weird, ain't it?" Lucy agreed.
Our navigator belted her hard on the back of her crown, making her rubbery neck stretch down and smack against the wooden floor. "IT'S BECAUSE OF YOUR STUPID STRENGTH! HOW THE HELL DO YOU EVEN HAVE SUCH A GREAT FIGURE WHEN YOU'VE GOT SO MUCH MUSCLE!?" She huffed. "Honestly."
I sweatdropped. "Oi, calm down already. Take a chill pill. We can fix it. Sheesh."
"Yeah, I can fix it," Usopp grumbled, closing the cupboard door behind him as he exited the small room. "But we'll have to stop and get some spare parts. Well, until then, Yuril, we'll rely on you for water."
I gave a thumbs-up. "Sure thing!"
Nami glared at Lucy. "Either way, I won't be asking this girl for any favors."
"How can you control water, anyway?" Vivi asked, raising an eyebrow. "Do you have a Devil Fruit or something? It's a bit strange that a fruit that takes away your ability to swim could give you power over the ocean."
"It's not a Devil Fruit," Nami told her. "She's a demigoddess."
"A demigoddess !? But I thought they were just myths!"
I pouted. "Well, I'm real enough, aren't I? But yeah, I'm a demigoddess, daughter… of Aes, the god of the sea.
"Isn't she amazing?"
Lucy giggled. "And that's not all! She's also a psychic and she's got this awesome sword that can transform! She's great!"
My face was a tomato as I looked down at her. "O-Oi, Lucy! I'm not... I'm not all that cool..."
Nami face-faulted. "Wait a minute, we won't have to use Yuril. Usopp, we have a spare water drawing machine. Could you please use that to get me some water?"
He sighed. "Yeah, sure..." The local long nose blinked and tic-pulsed. "Oi, dammit, Nami! Why don't you do it yourself ?"
Lucy sniffed, grinned, and turned to the kitchen as Nami walked back up to us. "Eh? I smell food!"
I sweatdropped. "It took you this long...? So slow."
"Ah! Lucy-chan!" cooed Sanji. "I was just about to tell you about the tarte aux poires I made for you!" But everyone ignored him.
Usopp turned shark-like and sent the raven-haired girl a nasty look. "... And YOU have no sense of responsibility whatsoever!"
"It's Lucy, did you really expect her to?"
"I said I was sorry... losing one really isn't that big of a deal..."
"That's what I'm talking about! NO responsibility!"
"Telling her about it won't change anything, Usopp..."
"Just shut up, you three!" Nami sighed.
The call of a seagull turned everyone's attention to the top of the Going Merry, where a newspaper bird, called a News Coo in this world, was perched on the rigging. It dropped a paper and accepted five 100 belli coins from Nami, who groveled about expensive prices. Then she sent an irritated Usopp to set up the spare water-drawing machine and went inside the kitchen with Vivi, Lucy and I to finish the dessert Sanji had made us and read the paper. Zoro sighed and decided to eat his dessert, too, grumbling about shit-cooks making shit-food.
"Why does the morning newspaper always come during the afternoon break?" the navigator complained.
"It can't be helped," Vivi soothed her with a shrug and a small smile. She was feeding Carue whatever giant ducks eat. "We're sailing the Grand Line, remember? We should be thankful to get any information at all."
I nodded and took another bite of my now-cooled tarte aux poires. "It must be incredibly hard to record any up-to-date information, what with the hard-to-access islands and unnavigable seas."
Nami sighed and turned a page. "You two're right about that." Something must have caught her eye, though, because as she was scanning the page for something interesting, her eyes widened and she glanced worriedly at Vivi.
"Did you find an interesting article?" the desert princess asked her, conveniently missing the look of sudden panic on the navigator's face.
"E-Eh?" Nami laughed weakly and turned the page quickly. "Oh, no, not at all! Nothing really."
Vivi blinked, shrugged, and went back to feeding Carue. "Oh."
I sweatdropped. "That was the worst acting I've ever seen.." I whispered to Zoro, who just nodded in agreement.
Lucy chewed her tarte aux poires and glanced at the newspaper. She almost turned away, but suddenly her eyes widened and a smile spread across her face. She hit the table and yelled, "Oi!"
The local ginger jumped. "W-what!?"
Our captain pointed to a spot on the page. "This! Zoro, Yuril, check it out!"
We glanced at each other with raised eyebrows, shrugged, and crowded around Nami to look at the article in question.
"It's just a picture of some Marines," Nami said, mystified.
Lucy giggled. "Yeah, but the girl in that picture isn't just anybody!"
I stared at the picture. It showed a scene that very much resembled the current of Reverse Mountain that washed out into the Grand Line. In it, some Marine guy in a captain's coat, wearing something that looked like a huge dog's head, was standing on a Marine ship, laughing at two kids who were terrified and hugging each other for dear life. One of them was a girl who had short, pink hair and glasses. She looked like she may've been chubby at one time, but was starting to lose the extra blubber. The other was a kid with blonde hair and a weird w-shaped chin.
"That's Cory?" I asked, tapping the rendition of the girl. I raised my eyebrow and added quietly, "Huh. She looks just like Coby except... well, female." Then again, that really shouldn't have been all that surprising. Although Lucy was very much a girl, she still closely resembled the original Luffy.
Zoro raised his eyebrow. "It is Cory!"
Lucy grinned and nodded, her black hair falling in front of her face. "Yup!"
"Cory?" Nami said, blinking and looking at her. "The friend you were sailing with before?"
"Yeah! Well, what does it say?"
"Let's see... 'Vice Admiral Garp's battleship has arrived at the Marine Headquarters on Marineford, in the Grand Line. This photograph was taken during their descent from Reverse Mountain. Vice Admiral Garp displayed his expected confident demeanor, but a few of the younger Marines seemed genuinely terrified.' That's it."
I grinned and laughed. "I don't blame 'em! That was one freakin' huge rock!"
The straw hatted girl couldn't have possibly made a wider grin. "Eh? So Cory made it to the Grand Line!"
Zoro nodded, smirking. "And to the Grand Line's Marines Headquarters as well. She's doing pretty good so far."
"Of course! 'Cuz she's going to be a Mayor in the Marines someday!"
"Not Mayor, you dork. A Commissioned Officer. A Marine officer."
"Right, right, that's what I meant."
"How did they make it so fast?" I wondered. "We only had time to stop at one island!"
Vivi smiled. "I don't know for sure, but I've heard that the personal battleships of the upper class Marines like Garp have special ships that allow them to go much faster than normal boats. I think they're called steam ships."
I nodded. "Oh, right. They run on coal and steam. That's what we had back home a hundred years ago. Then they found a way to make ships run on oil."
Everyone looked at me in surprise.
"Really? Your home must've been cool..." Lucy said.
"Just where did you come from, anyway?" Sanji asked. "You never did tell us. Whenever we've asked about your past, you've always given us an answer, but never actually said where you were from. You just vaguely said something about an island somewhere."
I gulped and looked at the floor. What would they say if I told them the truth? That I'm not from this world at all? That in the world I'm from, everyone thinks they're just fictional characters on a piece of paper? How would they feel if they knew that?
"Do you really have to know?" I said quietly.
Nami blinked. "What? It can't be that bad."
Lucy grinned. "Come on, just tell us! If you had a bad past, wouldn't it be better just to share it with all of us instead of having to carry it by yourself? You're our nakama! We'd stand by you no matter what!"
I glanced up at them. They were all smiling, even Carue, which shouldn't have been possible since he's a duck.
Well, alright.
I guess that I would've had to tell them sometime, anyway...
"The truth is, I'm not from the East Blue," I muttered. "I'm not from the North Blue, South Blue, or West Blue either."
Lucy tilted her head. "Are you from the Grand Line, then?"
I shook my head. "No, I'm not from the Grand Line, either." I could tell that this confused them, because they all exchanged looks of mystification. "See... I'm from a different world."
There was a pregnant pause. Then...
"EH!?"
I frowned. "I know it's hard to believe, but it's the truth. I'm not from this world. I'm not even from this universe. The place I come from is called Earth, and there are no pirates. There haven't been any for a really long time. There were seven continents and only five oceans, and there weren't any monsters or anything. All the adventures had already been done. Everyone knows everything about it, except the future, and they're trying to build a time machine so that they can find out about that, too."
Lucy pouted. "Your world sounds boring."
"HOW CAN YOU TAKE THIS SO EASILY!?" the others shouted at her.
I grinned weakly and shrugged. "Yeah, well, it was kinda boring, to be honest. Until I met my dad and he threw me into this world, I'd always felt like I didn't belong. I was always the weird kid. In my world, everybody had to go to school until they were, like, 18 or something, and although that created the chance to meet a lot of different people, it was also bad. I got on the bad side of one of the school bullies in fifth grade, and he scared everyone into hating me as a result."
Vivi furrowed her brow. "How terrible! That sounds like a horrible place to live."
"Well, it wasn't so bad. Up until I was sixteen, I had my mother. But then she died, killed by my step-sister, who was into a lot of drugs and alcohol and stuff. For the first year and a half, the police blamed it on me, since I ran away from home on the day of the crime, and I evaded them ever since, choosing a life on the streets over a life in an orphanage, where I'd be hated even more. I met a guy named Cracked-Up Chuck who also did drugs, but unlike my step-sister, was a really cool and nice guy. He had a black belt in karate, tae kwon do, and jujitsu, just to name a few. He taught me everything I know about martial arts. He's the one who gave me this leather jacket, which is why it's my treasure."
"Cracked-Up Chuck, eh?" Lucy giggled. "Sounds funny! I wanna meet him!"
I hit her over the head. "Idiot! You can't! He's in a different world! Weren't you even listening to me?" Then I looked at the other Straw Hats carefully. They looked surprised, but other than that, I couldn't really read their emotions.
Suddenly Sanji's eyes turned to hearts. "Ah! I always thought you had an otherworldly beauty, Yuril-chan!"
Nami's eyes lit up, too. "Is there a ton of money there?"
"I feel bad for you," Vivi murmured. "You had a tough life, too."
Zoro snorted. "Tch. Is that all? I'm going back to sleep."
Usopp, who I hadn't even known had come in, said, "Your world sounds much less scary than this freaky place."
"It sounds boring!" Lucy corrected him. "Who'd wanna live there? Here is much more fun!"
I blinked. "Wait! Don't you guys think I'm a freak or something?"
They exchanged confused looks. "Why? Is there a reason we should've?"
There was another pause, then I grinned. "Nah, I guess not. Hey, you're right! I feel like there's a huge weight off my shoulders now!"
Lucy giggled and burst out of the kitchen, running to the goat figurehead. She yelled, "YOSHA! Full speed to Little Garden!"
We Straw Hats and our guest smiled at each other. "Yosh!" we cheered, Carue quacking in agreement.