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Doom, dut, da, da.
It is never silent with Luffy.
From the moment he was born, came upon the loudness that the seas would listen to, the skies would part for. What the New World has heard from miles, miles away.
(It reaches Laugh Tale and it blooms its most fragrant flowers, its tallest trees, blows the most wonderful breeze; Laugh Tale looks a little more mystical, then.)
Garp has never heard a baby so loud, and when he tells him that, Luffy laughs and yells at him happily. When Ace tells him to stop wailing, dammit, he stops, but his tears never do. When Sabo asks him what his dream is, he yells it, just like his brothers did, but louder—making sure the world knows what he’s going to do, what he’s going to accomplish.
He has been letting the world know of his dreams. His laughter, his voice—he likes to be loud, he likes to be heard. And so the world heard him, and continues to do so.
Until it doesn’t.
Doom, dut, da, da.
Zoro doesn’t hear it at the time he takes his place as the first crewmate. At first, it hums with the sea waves, the crickets, the bird caws, the breeze, the creaking of their poor little dinghy boat. And then it starts getting louder as the time passes by, as they both grow stronger, as the crew grows larger along with the ship in their journey.
The drums fade when they divide their crew into two in Zou, where his nutjob of a captain launches his half-a-crew off Zunesha’s back, to rescue that stupid cook, while he and the rest take Law’s submarine to Wano (Zoro doesn’t really want to think about that time in Sabaody, where it went abruptly silent).
When he hears it again, though, it’s the loudest it’s ever been.
(“Oi, Marimo. Have you been hearing that?” Sanji had asked him one night up in the ruins of Oden’s castle, in a happenstance of sky watching. The clouds are grey and thick—nimbostratus clouds, Zoro has learned the Very Hard way.
The drums beat on ahead, faintly yet steadily; it hasn’t stopped ever since the crew reunited.
“Yeah. It’s louder than before.”
He feels the blonde look at his way. “Louder? You’ve been hearing this for some time now?” The cook takes a drag of his smoke, and it breaks out from his mouth when he speaks, “Since when?”
Droplets slowly splatter on them—it’s cool on his hot skin, almost prickling as they fall. He looks at the clouds for a moment, thinking that one formation looks uncannily like Chopper’s Guard Point. Then, “Since we fell from the skies. Probably.”)
Sometimes, it gets erratic, especially when they’re in the middle of a fight, as though it’s a battle accompaniment, or when they spot a ridiculous-looking creature of the sea and they’ve been starving for days and the resources on their supply hold has ran out. Other times, it’s steady like a marching band, resonant, softly reverberating in the air. A lull with the sea.
Either way, it has never stopped beating. (Zoro would know.)
Until it does.
Doom, dut, da, da.
Luffy takes the impact of the Emperor’s club head-on, as he always did with everything in his life.
It ought to kill him, his crew always told him as they tend to their wounds after every fight. Nami, especially prickly as she sews a new tear on his straw hat, will always scold him incessantly as Chopper wraps him in bandages. Sanji will always come in with his food, telling him to do not eat the plate again, please, blows Nami a kiss, pats Chopper on the head, and leaves again.
He dives in headfirst into everything, and it will kill him one day.
But I’m made of rubber!
Even rubber bands snap in half, Luffy!
Don’t worry, I’ll never die!
Luffy dies.
In the height of the overwhelming battle against the Emperor Kaido, the strongest creature alive, he takes the fatal blow with his whole body, and everything comes to a standstill.
It’s slow, this death—his ears ring from the static electricity the club emits, weighed even heavier with haki. And when he finally deflates from his fourth gear, when he finally coughs up all of the blood and air and feels the blinding pain circuiting throughout his body that he’s yelling until darkness clouds over him—he’s met with silence.
Complete, utter silence. Not even a drop of a needle.
It’s dark and quiet, this death. Luffy has always wondered how it would feel to die; had asked Brook in a tranquil night, once, when they finally sailed out of Thriller Bark.
How did it feel to die, Brook?
Brook had looked at him with his hollow eyes, though he felt its heaviness, its dread. It was cold, Luffy-san. As though I was in a frozen lake, sinking.
He didn’t know it was going to be this quiet, deafening—it’s not like the peaceful nights on their ship where the sea lulls them to sleep, nor like the warm summer days when the sun leaves them in a pleasant haze, cooing seagulls overhead. This silence consumes like the void, like the fire, and it eats at him, clawing at his flesh, weighing on his bones heavily.
The drums stop—
Sanji flinches at it, in his sleep, at the sudden silence. It had been thundering from the roof this entire time, even before they raided Onigashima. It fills his subconscious with dread.
(Momonosuke’s heart drops when he couldn’t hear Luffy’s voice anymore. There is the familiar sorrow and anguish that settles within his heart, like an old friend asking for a drink.)
And when Kaido bursts through the burning ceiling to announce, that indeed, “Straw Hat Luffy is dead!” — its coldness comes in waves, so sudden and heavy that it weakens their knees, blinding their eyes, pinching their lungs.
Dreams are born as much as they perish.
Is this goal, perhaps, futile, after all? Is this where their dreams end, then?
Is this where the king chooses to fall? Beneath an Emperor’s feet, his blood smeared on his club, on top of a skull? Is this who would be the King of the Pirates? Is he -
Ba-doom.
Sanji startles awake, wrapped in bandage. He looks up at the ceiling, delirious, heaving, yet he feels it—hears it, this time it’s booming, loud—loudest he’s ever heard.
—until it doesn’t.
Doom, dut, da, da!
Somewhere in the New World, on the peak of the tallest mountains, someone awakens from their eight-hundred-year-long slumber. (Sealing, imprisonment—at this point, the lines have blurred, and as much as their captain have never held any ill intent, he can be pretty hasty. Who the hell throws their crew member to the skies like that?)
Their limbs weigh heavy, thick with sleep and dreams and nightmares, and so they stretch them overhead, yawning tiredly. They only glance briefly on the lands—he knows how ever-changing the earth is; instead, they look up at the skies, where the moon is full and bright, where the clouds have parted for it to shine wonderfully. The skies haven’t changed—it never does, even as the earth corrodes with time.
They wonder what roused them from their sleep. And then they pause when they hear it—familiar. Nostalgic. Thunderous.
DOOM! DUT! DA! DA!
A beat they haven’t heard of since eight hundred years ago, since they were foretold a promise, since they were thrown gracelessly into the heavens, since they were assigned with a mission.
(Amidst the flames, the screams, the falling bodies—the never-ending hell, this war, Joy Boy is grinning at them when he calls for them, despite the blood on his face, despite his losing battles, despite it all. “Tsuzumi, hear me, hear my heart!”
(Uranus never really understood why their captain used such a name on them; they had been named Uranus as far as they remembered. But still, then, they listened to Joy Boy and his ever-beating heart.)
Doom, dut, da, da!
“Play along my heartbeat, it’ll shake all the bad and the evil in this world,” He tells them, cradling their face with his own battered hands. He’s smiling bright, and Uranus finds themself smiling back. “And when the time comes, the world will hear it again! Ya hear, Tsuzumi?”
“Aye, Captain!”)
Captain?
No… no, not quite. This one is a little faster—their captain’s was slower, despite how reckless he got.
Ah, so this time has come as you said, Captain.
They grin, then, finally shaking out of their stupor, and gathers their drums—it is time to carry out their last mission.
Their o-daiko is blessed by the skies above—divine as the moon and ferocious as the sun—where every struck they made called forth its strength, when need be. It has destroyed enemies, protected friends, and most of all, guided their ship through every tribulation the seas ever brought them.
(They wonder, for the briefest moment, how their other crew members are doing; if they’re also hearing the same heartbeat as they do, if they’re feeling the same joy as they do.)
They stand before the earth, with the skies at their disposal, atop the mountain peak. They have been awakened, summoned, and thus, they are here to fulfill their final job as the navigator of Joy Boy. They will guide this generation towards their freedom with everything that they can, as promised.
Eyes aglow with white speckles, they raise their bachi, and with their formidable strength still embedded even after many idle centuries, they strike.
Doom, dut, da, da. Doom, dut, da, da.
“Hear!” They bellow as they beat upon the drums, creating a rhythm that is carried by the clouds, hummed by the moon, amplified by the twinkling stars, and reverberated through the nightsky. They’re grinning from ear to ear, almost laughing—they can feel it tickling their lungs, their heart. Oh, the joy! “Hear, the sound of freedom!”
Doom, dut, da, da! Doom, dut, da, da!
The world seems to darken when Luffy died. There is silence amidst the chaos, where Luffy always, always fills up with his exuberance.
And then the beat starts again, doom… dut… da… da…, as though the rhythm is carrying on through the night from afar.
Until it isn’t—until it’s right above their heads, next to their ears, plummeting through their bodies, hammering and thundering like lightning bolts, like a heartbeat pulsating through the rhythm of a drum.
(The Gum-Gum Fruit picks its favorites, it seems; it is difficult to catch, to recover, to be shackled and used for anything but freedom. Uranus finally laughs aloud as they set their gaze upon the Holy Land, drumming away.
One day, and the Gods will lay their Judgement. One day, and it shall crumble.)
Luffy is dead, and then he isn’t.
Doom, dut, da, da!
Luffy always thought he had a funny heartbeat. He listens to his heart, once in a while, and how it beats. It’s like the drums when they threw a banquet in the skies, he’d laugh.
He feels a bubble of laughter, now, prickling in his lungs. His heart beats its funny rhythm, except—it’s louder, it’s booming in his ribcage, a beat that is so static and sonorous, vibrant and free.
In a minute, there is silence, and then the next, there is Luffy and his ear-shattering heartbeat—
Ah, so it is you, boy, a voice echoes in his head, around him; it’s thunderous as it’s gentle, words said around a crescent grin, as though it’s something funny. The sun has shined down on you. It loves you, boy!
What does the sun have to do with him? He doesn’t even know who this person is! And he’s in the middle of a fight with Kaido, he needs to get up and tell his heart to beat again and—
The sun has everything to do with you, sunray, the voice responds, hearing him and his incredulity. It is fond, their tone. They laugh, and it’s electric—it sounds like his. Go, then, Pirate King, again! The voice wraps around him, warm as the sun on his back, firm as the mountains around his arms. Once more, boy, change the world!
Luffy dies yelling; indignant, denying, a pain in the ass. He does not go down without a fight, never did—fights he knew he can pick. And then the earth stills, even the malevolent sea quiets, and the skies dim.
And when Luffy comes to, he’s yelling, again, accompanied by the drums. By his heart. Ba-doom, ba-doom, dut, da, da! It is reckoning him to dance, to celebrate—Luffy loves to dance, to celebrate everything there is in life, to celebrate living and existence, to celebrate his freedom. And now, to celebrate his second life, his second first breath, his second chance in the seas. The sun has made its judgement.
(The rhythm almost makes Zunesha halt on their steps—it has been so long since they have heard such a beat.
Momonosuke! I can hear it! They exclaim, filled with so much joy and relief and nostalgia. Oh, how long it has been!
Momonosuke perks up. What is it, Zunesha?! What do you hear?!
The drums of liberation! For the first time in eight hundred years… he is here! He has come!
Who is?! Who has come, Zunesha?!
Zunesha, in long, arduous, eight hundred years, is filled with hope—their eyes flicker brightly. Joy Boy! He has returned!)
His heartbeat reaches the firmament of the skies and the deepest seafloors and the innermost core of the earth, and they are filled with glee to hear the rhythm again—the marching beat, the drums of liberation.
The sound of freedom, of love, of hope, of joy.
(It’s a ripple effect from here onwards—Uranus awakens his remaining crew members, though now, they’re more widely known as the Ancient Weapons. Pluton rumbles from underneath Wano, and Poseidon jolts awake amongst the giant coral reefs.
It’s almost time.)
Everyone sees, in their horrified glee and awe and relief, a boy surrounded by white flames, more akin to the heavenly clouds above—like they were embracing him. He is beloved, after all, by the sun and moon alike. He grins especially wide underneath the moonlight, crescent-shaped, familiar—gleeful, almost manic. He seems demonic, his eyes flashing red for a second, but then it’s gone the next, appearing more angelic, pure, and filled with, simply, unadulterated joy.
He resembles the moon, above the seas—her bluish serenity, her elegance, her gentleness—but his usual exuberance is increased tenfold, bursting, tearing at the seams, and it’s blinding, like the sun—dangerously hot, blazing, melted honey. He almost looks untouchable, divine, how godly must he look like from the ground, as if he is the light itself that the moon is reflecting from. He feels the murderous heat and the devouring cold all at once, as if he were between the sun and the moon, as though he were the skies that hold them apart.
Once more, boy, change the world! The voice echoes wildly in his head, and it fills him with more energy, with more glee, and for the second breath he takes, he laughs.
Full, loud, booming—just like he always did.
He laughs underneath the glow of the pearlescent moon and above the ebbing seas, as though he finds the world amusing. He laughs like he wasn’t dying a few moments ago, as though it was a simple inconvenience. As if there isn’t a war waging on, as if there aren’t dreams sitting heavily on his shoulders, as if there isn’t an Emperor out to actually, for real, kill him. He laughs, carefree and mischievous, and it fills Kaido with rage like no other—he was winning, won briefly, and now... it’s as though he’s merely a comedic relief.
Luffy laughs in such a childlike joy, and it seeps through the soils of the earth, flows through the waves of the punishing sea, melting with the thunderous heartbeat of his—a song, a melody for the world, and they are there to listen, to hear, to be wrapped with and savored.
(Up above, somewhere in the New World, Uranus delivers a hard strike onto the drums, and the skies roar in response. It’s coming, they seem to say, the boy the world was waiting for is here!)
Doom, dut, da, da. Doom, dut, da, da. It’s a beating heart. Alongside laughter, freedom pulsates. The air is electric, heavily charged, and the skies, though as clear, are howling, fiery—they are bellowing to make everyone know that we’ve been waiting for you, Sun God!
Here he—Monkey D. Luffy, Sun God Nika, Joy Boy, liberation—comes.