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Makino had known Luffy for a very long time. In fact, she knew him from the day Garp had shown up at their docks for the first time in years with the boy. He was so tiny back then, bundled up gently in his arms. She remembered how tenderly he held him, almost as if he were trying to protect him from some unseen danger as he bowed his head towards the townspeople.
”He’s not safe with me or his father. Please, take care of him for me.”
They couldn’t exactly have said no.
Luffy grew up a true child of the village, being taken care of by whoever was available at any given moment. Of course, as a baby, Luffy couldn’t exactly protest this arrangement. Even as he got older and his baby babble turned into words he slowly started to realise that there was something different between him and the other kids. That when the sun set and it was time to go inside, they always went to the same house instead of waiting around until someone called his name, almost never the same person twice in a row. That they did not keep all their clothes in a bag so that they could be easily hauled around. That they called the adults they lived with ‘mom’ and ‘dad’. When he first started to ask questions about it, the adults would always make a funny face and change the subject. Once he asked one of his friends’ mom what a mom even was. She laughed at first before explaining it to him. Even though Luffy didn’t quite get it, he was still hopeful when he asked “Are you my mom too?”
She had laughed good-naturedly before saying that she wasn’t, she was only his friends’ mom.
“If you’re not my mom, then who is?”
She stopped laughing after that, and looked at him with strange, sad eyes.
“Why don’t you go and play outside?”
And no more on the topic was said.
But that didn’t mean that Luffy stopped thinking about it, in fact he thought about it a lot.
He didn’t understand why it made him feel so sad, why he had to sleep in a different bed every night, why sometimes the people he stayed with made bad faces at him when they thought he wasn’t looking.
He wondered why nobody seemed to understand.
He didn’t mean to act out, but he didn’t know what else to do. Maybe if he cried then they’d understand that he didn’t want to change house. Maybe they’d let him take his clothes out of his bag and put them away like all the other kids.
But it didn’t do any of that. Instead, now it seemed like nobody wanted him anywhere anymore.
“He used to be such an easy boy.” They would complain. “Now he’s impossible to deal with. Why should I take him in again? You didn’t have him at all last week!”
It didn’t take long for the parents' complaints to reach their children, and before long Luffy’s friends started turning their nose at him when he asked to play.
“Mamma says you’re too annoying. We don’t want you around anymore.”
By the time the adults realised what was happening, it was already too late.
Luffy was alone. He wondered if he always was, and had just now begun to notice.
It was on one of those days spent kicking a ball by himself that someone new called his name.
“Hello Luffy!” She said, crouching down. “I’m Makino. Do you remember me? I know we haven’t really talked much.” They hadn’t. Everything he knew about Makino had been from hearing the other adults talk. He knew that Makino wasn’t very old, that they all thought that she was a bright girl but too naive, that she was too young to be running the bar by herself. “I was wondering if you’d like to stay with me.”
Luffy froze. It was the first time anyone had asked his opinion on where he wanted to stay. Usually they just called him and he followed. It was also the first time there hadn’t been a set time limit on how long he’d be staying. Usually they told him “You’ll sleep at my house tonight” and by the next morning his bag was packed again and he was shuffled along to the next person.
He realised then, that Makino was genuinely waiting for him to answer. Upon seeing him hesitate, she added “We’ll be having meat tonight.”
That got his attention. Luffy loved meat.
He followed her happily back to the bar, ignoring the odd looks from the other patrons as he sat on the fun spinning chairs while he waited for his food. He recognized some of the men there as people he had stayed with sometimes. Some of them said hi to him when he waved at them but other than that nobody approached him. He didn’t mind much though, because Makino was way more fun to talk to than any of them had ever been. After dinner, he was led upstairs to one of the rooms and told that he could sleep there. Luffy threw himself onto the bed in delight. He had never had a whole room to himself before!
The next morning Makino woke him up by knocking on his door and asking if he wanted to eat before the clients started coming in.
It was two weeks after he started falling into a routine with Makino that he realised that he hadn’t been told to leave yet, that Makino washed his clothes with her own and hung them in the closet. Luffy had a home.
Makino, on her end, delighted in seeing that she had been right all along. When she had professed interest in taking Luffy in permanently, the other villagers had looked at her strangely. “He’s too much of a handful.” They said, “How can you run a bar and look after him at the same time? Do you want to run your parents’ business into the ground?”
“All he needs is some stability,” she insisted. “You’ll see.”
They did, in fact, see. Only a few days after starting his stay at Makino’s, he went right back to being the energetic child he used to be.
But still, Makino worried for him. He had started playing with the other children again, but she could tell that they weren’t really close. That there was still distance between them. Even when they were outside and willing to let him join in on their games, Luffy still preferred to sit out by the docks and watch the rolling waves. He would spend hours there, staring into the endless horizon. Luffy needed someone he could truly bond with, someone who could take all this great energy and sunshine inside him and give him direction, inspiration, something to look forward to everyday.
Luffy was too big for this small village, but she was worried that the fire would be stifled if he stayed here too long, burning out before it even had the chance to blaze bright.
Then, one day, the pirates docked on their shores.
From the moment he first laid eyes on that imposing ship, Luffy was enamoured.
While the pirates clearly meant no harm and simply wanted to restock and rest on shore for a while, Makino was still cautious about letting Luffy roam near them unsupervised lest he say something unwise and anger them. It turned out that she needn’t have worried, as even when he did ask ridiculously invasive questions, the pirates always laughed and gave him answers so ludicrous even he realised they were joking.
Out of all the pirates, the captain and Luffy seemed to gravitate towards each other the most. Makino would have previously thought that a pirate Captain would have considered himself above entertaining a strange and insistent child but from what he saw he was genuinely delighted every moment he spent with Luffy.
It really shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone when Luffy had started going around loudly proclaiming that he would be a pirate. And for all that the Captain laughed at him, there was an odd fondness in his eyes when he looked at Luffy, like he reminded him of someone he knew.
The Captain- Shank’s, she later discovered- never called Luffy a burden, never made him feel like he ever had less than his complete attention. He introduced him to all his crew and even gave him a personal tour of his ship. And when Luffy climbed onto the bow and drove a knife under his eye in an attempt to prove his worth to them Shank’s first instinct had been to have his own doctor stitch him up. Making sure he was ok before taking him back to the bar to laugh about the situation.
Makino, filled with equal parts affection and exasperation, watched them fondly as they bickered.
She could have never imagined the day would turn as quickly as it did.
The bandits, Shank’s unwillingness to cause a scene, Luffy’s anger.
The odd fruit hidden in an innocuous box, watching horrified as Luffy’s body stretched in ways a human never should.
Devil Fruit. Shanks had called it. She had only heard of them in stories, and was still struggling to believe that they were actually real before being occupied by a much more pressing thought.
Luffy, wonderful, amazing, stupid, reckless Luffy had gone out to confront the bandits alone, to defend Shanks honour. Makino thought for certain that she would be planning a funeral within hours but a pistol shot rang out and it was one of the bandits' men that fell.
Shanks stood there, his crew at his back, and announced to the world at large, ”You hurt my friend, I won’t forgive you.”
Much later, when the dust had long settled, when Luffy had been taken again and had been brought back, trembling and crying in Shanks’ unwavering hold despite the blood on his shirt. When the last of the pirates' supplies had been packed onto their ship. When Shanks turned around one last time to bestow one final gift upon Luffy’s head. She would wonder. What did Shanks see in Luffy, a boy he barely knew, that would lead him to risk his men, his arm, his life? Who was he seeing in Luffy when his eyes filled with buried pain and grief for those few brief moments when he thought no one would notice?
A part of her had longed to ask him, but that part of her died the moment the last of their ship disappeared into the horizon.
Luffy sat there for hours after, holding that old straw hat in his hands until the sun began to set and the world was bathed in orange and pink. Only then did he put the hat back on his head to run indoors.
The stars of the sky had found a home in his eyes.
At that moment Makino knew that Luffy had found his path. No matter how many people told him it was dangerous, no matter how fiercely the mayor disapproved. Not even Garp, who had been outraged at the news that his grandson had officially decided to become an outlaw and subsequently dragged him up the mountain to be raised alongside his other ward, could shake his conviction.
The years passed, Luffy set off on his own journey, and life went on.
Makino rarely left the village, but on one of her rare trips into the city, she spotted something in the very back of an old bookstore. Bounty posters, decades old by the looks of it, and still in relatively good condition. After making sure that no one was watching her, she began to flip through the pile until she found what she was looking for. Carefully she hid her prize amongst her shopping bags and didn’t take it out until she was back in the village and in the privacy of her room. There, she unfolded the poster.
RED HAIR SHANKS, the bounty read, with the man looking at least ten years younger and with a familiar hat placed upon his head. She smiled at it while she gently placed the worn paper next to a much newer poster boasting a young boy with a beaming smile. WANTED: STRAW HAT LUFFY.
The way the pictures had been taken, it was almost as if Shanks could see Luffy’s smile.