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Chapter Text

Shanks meets his best friend and his first mate in a Marine holding cell, and the story is long, convoluted, and starts with him getting absolutely shitfaced in a no-name tavern in some corner of Loguetown he’ll never be able to find his way back to in the morning. The bar is dirty and dingy and full, sailors toasting to the death of the Pirate King and the dawn of a new age—that will come with, to their hopes, much less piracy—and the whole world is just busy enough that the barkeep can get away with sliding ale to a very much underaged Shanks when he beckons for another one. There’s a group of fishermen singing in the middle of the floor, arms slung over each other as they sway to the melody of someone’s lute playing a jaunty, upbeat tune, and another group of cheap-looking merchants in the corner cheering for another round. Everyone’s in good spirits, and there’s still blood soaking the wood up above that square. No amount of rain will wash it out.

Shanks reaches the bottom of his tankard and shakes it over his mouth. The ale tastes like piss, but it still goes down like water. He wishes he can get his hands on something that will burn down his throat and leave him blind.

“To a new age, boys,” a sailor raises his tankard, and the people around him toast to that with a chorusing cheer.

Another man takes a gulpful and makes a satisfied noise before he says, “Good fucking riddance. If the fucking Marines were gonna take any longer I woulda’ gone out and killed him myself.”

Someone snorts. “What are you gunna do to him, Barney? Divorce him?”

“Hey. Marlene and I ain’t done yet.”

Another person pipes in from the bar, “Coulda’ fooled me, Barn - we’s all seen her getting cosy with’e preacher from Goa!”

The man throws his empty tankard at the person at the bar, who ducks from it with a yelp. The barkeep yells at him to do that again, Barn, and I’m throwing ye’ out on yer’ ass.

The first sailor says, “Woulda’ liked to see you get absolutely flattened by the Pirate King, mate. Make a good laugh.”

A round of laughter goes through the group, and the man—the one they call Barney—sneers. “Pirate King this, Pirate King that - those crazy pirates love making up names to feel better than the normal folk—”

“Cheers to that, mate.”

“—Gold Roger’s just a bastard of a man like any other pirate scum and it’s time we start treating him like one!”

Shanks’ captain is not just anything. Was not. This is how he knows this man is not a sailor.

The sailor, the one who first toasted, speaks once the cheers die down, “Dunno ‘bout that one, Barn. You’s all seen him up there. Can’t tell me that was a man.”

Shanks’ grip tightens around his tankard.

“Right monster he was,” an old man mutters.

“Didn’t you hear?” Another man leans forward as if sharing a secret. “He decimated half a fleet all on his own. And that’s on the Grand Line. You know what kind of monsters come out of the Grand Line?”

“Ye’ been listening ta’ too many pirates, mate. Nutty, the lot a’ them.”

“I heard he ate the Marines who came after him.”

A guffaw. “You sailors have got nottin’ but saltwater in yer’ heads. You listening to this?”

“Right monster,” the old man repeats, quiet.

“If you ask me, his mother shoulda’ drowned him before he even left ol’ Logue. Save the world a lotta trouble, if you ask me.”

“Good thing no one’s asking you, eh, Tim?”

“Well, it’s a good day then, innit?”

“Good riddance I say!”

“I bet the One Piece isn’t even real and he was just saying all’at as a final ‘fuck you!’ to the World Government. Only thing he was good for, honestly.”

“Of course it’s fake. And if you ask me, I say Gold Roger’s a fraud!”

“Take that back.”

The silence is deafening. It takes Shanks a second to come back to himself, to recognise his own voice coming from his mouth, to realise he is standing, tankard rolling on the floor. His mind is as numb as his tongue, but he speaks anyway.

“Take back what you just said.”

Every eye in the tavern is on him. He’s drunker than he’s ever been in his life (drunker than he’d been when he and Buggy stole Rayleigh’s most expensive bottle and no no no god Shanks is not thinking about his family not thinking about Buggy who looked at him with disappointment and disdain and rain coming down with no end his Captain on that platform) but he’s speaking clearer than he’s ever spoken before.

None of the men stand, but the sailor says, “Go home kid. Yer’ too young to be this sloshed.”

Barney snorts. “No, no, let the kid speak. Tell me, redhead, what am I taking back?”

Shanks resists the urge to shake away the dizziness, knows that will make it worse, and he says, “What you just said about—” the Captain, my Captain “—about Roger.”

The man barks out a laugh. “You one a’ his fanatics, boy? Wanna be a scawy piwate when you’re a man?”

Shanks should leave. His Captain is telling him to go, to leave it alone, that it’s just words, my boy, it’s not worth getting angry over. But Shanks isn’t thinking, isn’t doing anything but reacting to the words these ignorant Blue Sea landlubbers are saying about his Captain.

He shifts on his feet to keep from stumbling when his vision tries to upend himself, and the sword at his waist makes a noise as well. Barney’s eyes zone in on the weapon, and he stands up to his full height - taller than Shanks, but nowhere near his Captain. This man is looming and he’s trying to intimidate, but Shanks is a Grand Line pirate. His Captain is Gol D. fucking Roger. Was. Fuck, he wants to be sick.

“Look, red,” the man says, and that nickname makes his skin crawl when it’s coming from a stranger’s mouth. “It’s not too late to pick up a respectable apprenticeship; you saw what happens to pirates up in that square didn’t ya? If anything, that monster did you a favour by dying like the dog he was—”

It takes all of the clarity he’s still holding onto not to draw his sword or unleash his Haki on the spot—because drawing his sword will summon a certain swordsman he is very much avoiding, and unleashing his Haki will summon the Marines and probably Garp the fucking Fist, who he is also very much avoiding for very obvious reasons. Instead, Shanks throws a punch that sends Barney flying and crashing into a table.

The whole tavern is in an uproar immediately, barkeep yelling and everyone else standing. The sudden movement makes Shanks’ head spin and he stumbles against the bar. Two men try to grab hold of him, but Shanks doesn’t need to be sober to go for their nose and nuts respectively, sending them groaning to the floor. He’s not sober enough to avoid a fist flying into his face though, and pain bursts from his nose as it lands, shoving him against the bar again, wood digging into his back.

Another man comes for him, and by now Shanks can barely separate the faces of the people in this tavern until they’re all blurring together into one. He’s still coming for Shanks though, so Shanks kicks out into his assailant’s gut.

That proves a poor decision because even as the impact lands, the man grunts and grabs Shanks’ leg.

“Shit,” he says and spins until he’s facing the bar, throwing his hands over the edge on the other side just in time for the man to try and yank Shanks towards him. The unexpected resistance seems to surprise the man who is probably just as drunk as—but definitely not more than—Shanks and that pause gives him time to pull himself halfway over the bartop with his fingers, bringing the man holding his legs with him. He grabs the first bottle behind the bar he can get his hands on and spins around to shatter it over his assailant’s head.

He thinks the barkeep yells as the liquor bursts over the floor, but someone else is already grappling him and wrestling him to the ground.

That’s disastrous. Shanks is still a New World pirate, so he frees an arm and punches the man’s gut. The force is enough to incapacitate him and Shanks doesn’t even have to do anything fancy. He pushes the body off him - and someone kicks him in the stomach.

And fuck that hurts. Another kick and Shanks turns his head to throw up, sick and saliva sticking to his face, straw hat falling to hang at his neck. Another kick tries to land and Shanks grabs the leg with one hand, snapping it cleanly in half with his other. The crunch is followed timely by a scream, and Shanks rolls himself until his back is against the bar, out of the way of the rest of the tavern fighting each other in a frenzy.

He really doesn’t want to get up, but he hears someone cry out, “I found the little twerp!”

Shanks swears again and pushes himself onto his feet with one of the barstools. A punch flies towards him and he stumbles to dodge it. He thinks his new opponent is the sailor from the earlier group, if his distinct clothes are any indication, and the man tries to hit him again. Shanks stumbles out of the way again and shoves the man into his momentum, sending him crashing against the bar just in time for another guy to come charging toward him as well. Shanks jerks forward to slam his hand into the guy’s nose, using his momentum against him as well.

They keep coming, but all Shanks is thinking in the midst of the mindless fighting is Wow. I’m really good at fighting drunk.

He flips another man onto the floor. It’s barely martial arts, a mockery of real battle—he doesn’t even draw his sword—but it’s all he needs against these Blues civilians. Well - mostly.

Shanks is yanked backwards, choking, by the string of his straw hat. He elbows behind him blindly and it hits flesh. The person yelps, and in their struggle, the straw hat is torn from his head.

The straw hat. Is torn. From his head. The straw hat. That his Captain gave him.

Every single body in the tavern hits the floor, and Shanks reigns in that split-second loss of control.

The sudden silence in place of the wild commotion jars. His ears are ringing.

Shanks takes the straw hat back from slack fingers. Dusts it off. Places it back on his head. Realises he’s not drunk enough after all.

He slips over the bartop to grab a glass, and the most fancy looking bottle from the admittedly not-that-fancy array on the shelf behind the bar. He pours himself a drink. It burns down his throat.

It was even getting fun. By the end of it he didn’t remember why he was fighting in the first place. Not until someone took his straw hat. Now, he’s not even numb anymore.

Rayleigh will be so pissed that he’s getting wasted and getting into brawls.

Rayleigh isn’t here. None of them are.

Shanks puts his face in his hands.

Thankfully, the tavern door is kicked open, and a voice starts shouting, “We’re here to stop the disturbance—”

Silence. Shanks looks up to see a Marine with pink hair shorn to a fuzz standing on the threshold, blinking at the piled bodies. They kneel down to take a pulse, then yell out in the same tone they did earlier, “Just unconscious!”

The Marine takes another look around the room and finally notices Shanks standing frozen on the other side of the bar. They march across the bodies.

“You! Bartender!”

Shanks blinks. He looks behind him, then back at the Marine, pointing at himself in question. There’s no way the Marine didn’t notice the blood running down his front.

“Yes! What happened here!” The Marine stops a metre away from the bar, back and posture ramrod straight. This late into the night, their white uniform is still crisp and shiny, collars folded so neatly as if their outfit is fitted on a mannequin. They stare unblinking with wide, round eyes straight at Shanks. With an eccentric air about them, he immediately gets the feeling they’re a Marine who came straight out of the Grand Line.

“Uh,” Shanks starts. There are other Marine grunts behind this officer arranging the unconscious bar-goers into safer lying positions. “Dunno. They all just collapsed - like that.”

Not his best fib. Still, the Marine takes it at face value. “I see!” they shout and give Shanks another considering look. “You did good! Withstanding Haki like that is no easy feat!”

“Uh,” Shanks says again, inching slowly to the end of the bar. “Yeah. Thanks. ”

“What a strong spirit! You would make a great Marine!”

Surely, he’s in some fever dream. He’s edging out from behind the bar and about to make a run for it when the Marine’s attention snaps on him again and he freezes for lack of anything better to do.

They look him up and down, much more intensely this time. “You’re…”

Shit.

“... way too young to be working in this establishment!”

Oh.

“Who is the owner! A strong word must be had! A young man like you can have a much better future in the Marines!”

“I’m - uh,” he wracks his brain for a suitable lie, but he’s also way too inebriated so what comes out of his mouth is, unfortunately, the truth, “I don’t work here.”

The Marine stares. “I see!” Then, they point an accusing finger at him, body angling. “So you are taking advantage of the citizens here! You are a thief.”

Shanks dashes for the door, only for the Marine waiting there to hook her arm around his neck, using his momentum against him and making him choke. She winds that arm further around him and slams him to the ground, knocking the wind out of his lungs. He wheezes - or tries to, no air coming out.

“Gottem’, boss,” the Marine drawls, crouched over Shanks and staring down at him from beneath her Marine cap, eyes shaded. Okay, definitely Grand Line Marines.

“Excellent work, Bobbi!” the officer shouts.

The Marine they called Bobbi hefts him onto her shoulder, and Shanks lets himself swing, already feeling the soreness and the dizziness from the night in his whole body. She turns out of the doorway, and a Marine soldier runs up to the officer also stepping out.

He salutes. “Lieutenant Kanka! There’s a riot on 23rd street and—”

“Reinforcements!” The officer turns to Bobbi. “Take the thief to the nearest holding! Make sure he is comfortable and join me!”

Bobbi says, “Yes, boss.”

The Marine turns abruptly, swinging Shanks around and eliciting a groan as his head spins with the movement.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “No Marine’s going to be processing you anytime soon with the night we’re having. You just get a free cell to sleep in tonight.”

Shanks is not mollified by that in the slightest.

-

“First hangover?” the man in his cell asks as Shanks throws up the consequences of his hubris into the piss bucket.

It’s not even morning yet by the time he wakes so most of the people in the other holding cells—some of them packed—are still sleeping, with the occasional groans ringing out, wounds and similar hangovers being nursed. Right this moment, though, the only sound is Shanks’ retching. He can almost hear Rayleigh laughing at him.

“You probably feel like swearing off alcohol for the rest of your life, huh,” the man continues, voice low as he narrates Shanks’ exact thought process. “Don’t worry. You’ll be swearing off alcohol a dozen more times—it won’t take.”

“Second hangover,” Shanks corrects, flopping himself onto the floor. The man snorts.

“Starting the alcoholism young? Well - not like I blame you. World’s gone to shit.”

“Yeah?” Shanks croaks. “What is it this time - Roger corrupting the youth? Scum pirates?”

The man huffs, amused. “You sound fed up. Besides, I’m not that self-deprecating.”

Shanks opens his eyes and rolls his head to look at the man. “You’re a pirate?”

The man is sat leaning against the wall, arms crossed. He’s not looking at Shanks, watching the darkness outside the holding cell. He says, “Well, I say that, but I’m self aware enough to know most of us are scum anyway.”

Shanks snorts, then chokes on the taste of sick up his nose. “Ugh—” he rolls over bodily to gag over the stone floor. Nothing comes out, but his nostrils sting with it anyway.

After a moment, the man says, “You’re not from Loguetown, aren’t you?”

Shanks wipes his nose and mouth, looking up—the man is finally meeting his gaze. “What does it look like?”

The man shrugs. “You look too strong to be from East Blue.”

It’s not often a stranger looks at Shanks and doesn’t just see a kid. “No one ever said that about—” my Captain “—Roger.”

He grunts. “Guess not. What’s your name, kid?”

Shanks shuffles, pushing himself to lean against the same wall as his cellmate, opposite side of the cell as they are. He says, “Shanks. Just Shanks.”

The stranger’s fingers twitch almost like a reflex, the same way Gaban’s does whenever he’s craving a cigarette. He says, “I’m Benn Beckman.”

“Beckman,” Shanks repeats his name for the feel of it. Then he asks, “If you’re a pirate, then where’s your crew?”

“Where’s yours?”

“Ah.” That’s low. Shanks can go lower, but he doesn’t. “Don’t got one.”

Beckman raises a brow, dubious. Shanks rolls his eyes.

“You think my crew would’ve let me get drunk and arrested? Well - Captain would’ve said it’s a necessary rite of passage and our first mate would want me to suffer the consequences myself. Still, he wouldn’t have let me get drunk in the first place.”

Beckman watches him for a moment before smiling mildly. “Seems like your crew is your family.”

They were. They really were. Shanks knew no other family for as long as he could remember, and he had no father, no mother, but his crew was no less his family for it. He learned to walk on a ship, learned to talk from those seadogs, and he was raised on the love of the most wanted criminals in the word—he wouldn’t ever change a thing.

And now his Captain was dead.

“That’s a scary look on your face,” Beckman remarks.

Shanks laughs, because he has to, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “Like I said: don’t got a crew.”

Beckman does not say anything to that, only, “I probably won’t have one soon.”

Shanks looks at him curiously. “Does that have anything to do with why you’re here?”

“Ever heard of Davy Back Fights?”

He whistles. “Your captain got challenged?”

“My old captain.”

Oh, Shanks thinks. “You got snatched.”

Beckman’s fingers twitch in that particular way again and he seems to notice, curling his hand into a fist to stop the reflex. “You’d think,” he says, “that a pirate will quit when they’re forced on a different crew, but you’d be surprised by how many of us don’t have anything else but pirating to do.”

“And you’re one of them.”

He shrugs. “I got a four million bounty. That’s nothing on the Grand Line, but it’s a bounty. All I can do is fight and navigate somewhat, and there’s no better way to make a living off of that than as a pirate.”

“But none of them are coming for you.”

Beckman’s hand flexes for a moment. “No. They used me as a distraction. And now I’m here.”

“Huh,” Shanks says quietly. That outcome seems almost obvious; the crewmates gained from Davy Back Fights will acclimate or they won’t, and when they don’t, it’s a strained relationship where crewmates don’t trust each other. The betrayal is expected at this point.

“You should get out.”

“What?” Shanks snaps to attention.

“From being a pirate. You’re young enough to—”

Shanks groans.

“—start a better life—”

“Nope,” Shanks chirps. Beckman gives him a deadpan look.

“It’s really not as glamorous as—”

“Nope! I spent my whole life a pirate, and I will spend the rest of it as one.”

Beckman pauses. “Ah. You’re a seachild.”

“I know it’s not glamorous,” Shanks says, annoyed. He was vaguely aware that when Captain found him in a treasure chest, there were protests against keeping him—but by the time he could remember, there was no member of his crew who wouldn’t raise war if he was taken from them. They knew, maybe, that it was no place for a kid to grow up, and Shanks himself knew it most times - but they were pirates. They simply didn’t care what should and shouldn’t be—their captain is Gol D. fucking Roger, the freest man in the world. He says, “But I’m a pirate. I’ll be free on the sea or I’ll be dead.”

“That’s awesome!”

Both of them jump as a new voice startles them. “Who—” Shanks starts, looking around for the source of the voice when it comes again.

“Heyyyy - what are you guys even doing here?”

They look up. There’s a barred window above them, and he thinks he sees fingers wrapped around them.

“What the hell,” Shanks mutters, blinking in confusion. His head is pounding from his sudden movement, but he continues to shuffle away from the wall to see who is hanging on the side of the cell.

Then, a peculiar laugh: shishishishi. “I finally found you,” the person says, and Shanks registers that the voice is extraordinarily young.

“Get off the wall, kid,” Beckman calls out, though there is a caution in his voice as to not alert any guards.

“No way,” the stranger says. “I can’t talk to you like that.”

Shanks asks, “Why are you even talking to us?”

“Eh? Why wouldn’t I be talking to you? Oh, hey, is that you, Beckman? Shishishi, you look young.”

Beckman sighs, “Did Captain Pic send you? Look, kid, whatever he said he’d pay you—”

“Who’s that?” the stranger bulldozes over his words. From the other side of the cell Shanks can finally see their face pushed up against the window’s bars and they seem to be scanning the cell. “Where are the rest of the Red-Haired Pirates?”

“Wha - hey!” Shanks yells indignantly at the dig towards his hair colour.

“Oh, yeah,” the kid laughs again and says, “Not yet, huh?”

“What does that even mean ?”

“Ah, this is annoying. Hey, wait there okay?” The kid drops from where they’re hanging onto the bars with the slapping sound of sandals landing on the other side. They seem to be walking away, the slap slap slap of those flip flops fading with distance.

Silence. Shanks and Beckman look at each other.

Shanks bursts into laughter, “Dehahahaha! It’s not like we can leave either way, haha!”

Beckman sighs again, and he seems to do that a lot. “What even…”

Shanks is still laughing, and someone further down the hall bangs against the cell and shouts, “Shut up!”

Shanks stifles his giggles, suddenly aware of the absurdity of his situation. “What a mood-maker,” he says. “I can’t really say depressing shit now, can I?”

“Seriously,” Beckman mutters. 

Then, inexplicably, they hear the slap of those shoes against the stone again, coming closer - except, this time they can hear it from inside the station. Shanks scrambles to his knees, peering out into the hall. There is a sound, barely a commotion, and then the creaking of metal doors opening. He’s heard that sound throughout the night as crooks are brought in, the Marines busy with policing the celebrations and riots, sometimes the same thing, from the Pirate King’s death—but he has a feeling this one is a much less routine door-opening.

Slap slap slap slap slap. The sound comes closer until the kid from before ambles into view with no sense of urgency or any stealth at all. He’s dressed in a short-sleeved floral-print shirt and blue shorts, looking more at home on a vacation and wildly out of place in a holding cell. He comes to a stop at their cell and squats down, and this close Shanks can tell he’s about as young as Shanks himself, if not younger.

“Yo,” the boy says, waving a hand.

Shanks resolutely does not laugh at the absurdity of it all. Instead, he asks incredulously, “How’d you even get in here?”

“I just walked in.”

Oh, this guy’s a riot.

“Anyways,” the kid says, sticking his pinky up his nose irreverently. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?”

He shrugs. “Like you got arrested.”

“I did.”

His brows furrow. He looks to Beckman, then to Shanks, blinking. “Huh? You lost to the Marines?”

What is that tone even supposed to mean? Shanks is immediately on the defensive, “I got caught off guard, okay?”

“It means he was wasted,” Beckman says, to which Shanks shoots him a betrayed look.

The boy stares at him, and there’s something about him that niggles at a long-buried part of Shanks’ mind, something about his dark hair and eyes, that unnerving stare. Then, a mischievous grin grows on his face, and Shanks can tell with the veteran skill of having an annoying brother that this guy is making fun of him. “Heh. Guess you can’t hold your liquor yet, huh. I’m gonna remember this.”

He reiterates: what the fuck does that even mean? Whatever, Shanks isn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Hey,” Shanks says in a whisper-shout, throwing his Observation over the holding cells to make sure no one is listening in. “Can you get the key to this cell for me? Since you’re here anyway.”

His Observation picks up Beckman’s attention focusing on them. He immediately drops the Haki, the sensory overload too much for his throbbing headache right now.

The boy rests his chin in his hand as he looks at Shanks. “Can you not get out yourself?”

Well. Probably, if he broke through the wall—but that would alert the Marines. The cell bars are made of seastone as is Marine regulation and that’s near impossible to break even if he has Advanced Armament—which he doesn’t yet—and inconceivable without his sword.

“I’m trying not to tell every Marine in the vicinity that we’re escaping. So?” Shanks jerks his chin towards the direction the boy came from, likely where the keys are being kept. 

The boy tilts his head to the side while giving Shanks a considering look. He’s thinking about something, Shanks can tell. He impatiently crosses his arms, reaching out again with his Observation to check on the guards’ location, hoping most of them are far enough away that the boy won’t get caught.

The boy moves and for a moment Shanks thinks he’s going to stand up and help them, but he just sits back on his ass, and asks, “What do I get?”

“Huh?”

The boy averts his eyes and says, “Nami always said I need to ask for com-sation when I help.”

“Compensation?” Beckman offers.

“That-ensation.” He clears his throat, assuming his suspiciously shifty behaviour, not meeting their eyes.

Shanks gapes at the audacity of this guy. “Why are you even here in the first—” he throws his hands up in the air. “Fine! Fine - what do you want from me?”

The boy’s suspicious demeanour evaporates and he shoots forward until he’s pressed to the bars, startling Shanks back a little, and he beams, “Sail with me.”

The boy’s smile has the same effect on his pounding head as a flashlight shone directly into his face, making him squint. That smile - the shape of it rings familiar, a shadow of it imprinted in the back of his eyes but Shanks can’t recall the memory, failing to reach for it. It reminds him of something—something he knows very well and yet a shade removed enough that it’s just beyond his grasp.

Shanks registers his demand. “What? Wait, no - I’m a pirate.”

“Duh.”

Beckman says, “You’re not heading out to find the One Piece are you?”

The boy says, “Of course. Well - not yet.”

That stops Shanks short. “Not yet?”

He nods fervently. “I’ll head to Laugh Tale with my crew or not at all.”

Laugh Tale. The sudden name drop makes Shanks’ heart skip a beat, and he’s taken aback by the knowledge at all. As far as he knows there are only a handful of people so far who know what Roger named that island at the end of the Grand Line. But then his demand—

“I’m not joining your crew!” Shanks says and the boy frowns.

“I didn’t ask! Besides, we can’t both be captains!”

“But you just said to sail with you.”

He blows a raspberry, sinking further from where he had jumped up in excitement earlier. “I just need to get to Water 7 so Franky can make me a ship and then I need to find Brook or he’ll be lonely. And I need to get off this island by morning.”

Shanks has no idea who those people are. He says, “Look - there are better and less dangerous people who can take you to Water 7.”

The boy says, “Boring. And Beckman can navigate, can’t he?”

Was this guy eavesdropping on them? “Why are you asking me and not him, then?”

“Huh? Aren’t you his Captain?”

Simultaneously: “What?” “He’s not.”

He looks between them, then his eyes light up. “Oh! Is this how you met? I think I remember Shanks telling stories about it, shishishi. ”

Half that sentence doesn’t make sense, but that he knows Shanks’ name means he was eavesdropping.

Then, Shanks feels a Marine move towards the holding cells on the edge of his Observation, and the sense of urgency returns. He grits his teeth and says, “Okay - okay, fine. I can navigate somewhat; I’ll take you to sea.”

“Yay!” He falls back, arms thrown up. His volume draws the attention of the people in the other cells.

“Yes, now hurry.”

“Ah,” the boy recovers from his delight and leans towards Shanks again. “You gotta promise, ‘kay?”

“What - yes! Just hurry!”

“Hey, kid,” a man from the opposite cell says, his voice slimy and predatory. “You breaking us outta here?”

The boy ignores the heckles from all around, eyes dark as he holds Shanks’ gaze. He’s not smiling anymore. “Promise.”

And Shanks - has to. “I promise I’ll sail with you,” he swears.

The boy laughs, bouncing up onto his feet. Shanks feels the Marine coming closer to the door, but the overload of Wills waking up in the cell block is too much for his hungover brain and he has to pull back his Haki.

“Hey, Beckman, move over a bit,” the boy says, and he holds his shoulder, winding something up.

“Wait, what are you—”

He punches the cell door. No - he doesn’t even touch it. It goes flying into the cell anyway.

Silence falls on the holding cells.

Shanks whips his head around to look at the door, and is relieved to find that the seastone is still intact; the whole door has just flown off its hinges.

“Okay, let’s go,” the boy says cheerfully. Shanks wastes no time shimmying out of the gap where the door used to be, motioning for Beckman to follow. After what looks to be a moment of hesitation, he follows. The other crooks in the cells start yelling for them to free them as well.

Shanks turns to the exit just in time for a Marine to step through, freezing as they stare at each other.

The Marine sucks in a breath to yell and Shanks draws up his Conqueror’s.

“There’s a—” the Marine doesn’t get the chance to shout out a warning before the boy plants two sandal-covered feet in her face, crossing the length of the hall before anyone even notices. He falls with animal grace to a crouch as the Marine falls limp with a thud, then he stands up just as smoothly with his hands on his hips. He turns to them with a grin.

“Slowpoke,” he sticks out his tongue, and Shanks is immediately annoyed.

Shanks follows him in a run, bursting through the open doorway just in time to see the boy knock another Marine out with a bare punch.

“Do you have a ship?” the boy asks.

“No? Where’s my—” Shanks vaults over a desk to find his sword. Beckman jumps after him, most likely to search for his belongings as well.

“Boo,” the boy pouts, threading his hands behind his head as he waits for them.

Shanks rifles through the lockers, speaking distractedly, “Look, we can steal a ship from the docks - who knows how hungover everyone in Loguetown is right now.” Shanks certainly is.

“No way,” the boy says, making Shanks pause his search to look back at him.

“Hah? How else are we going to get a ship before sunrise?”

“We can’t just steal someone’s crewmate,” he says as if that makes any sense. “A ship is crew too!”

Shanks is about to retort, but stops short at the petulant whine that is so familiar.

She’s had a good voyage, the Oro Jackson.

I don’t want to leave her behind! Buggy had cried, and Sunbell had put his hands on both of their shoulders.

She’ll always be crew, Captain had said, putting his hand on her figurehead. Thanks for carrying us to the end, big girl.

Thank you for sailing with me!

Shanks sighs, but it’s not a harsh tone.

Then Beckman says, cocking the barrel of his gun and checking the bullet chamber, “How about a ship that’s being mistreated by its crew?”

Shanks and the boy turn their attention to him. Beckman looks up.

“My crew - my old crew aren’t so good with upkeep. The Razor Hammer deserves better than that.”

The boy laughs. “Let’s steal a ship then!”

-

They’re running through the streets under the dark cover of the night sky, Beckman leading the charge.

“There’s thirteen of them,” he tells them. “It’s likely all of them are on the ship, but it’s also very likely they’re all knocked out from the celebrations. If we can throw them overboard while they’re asleep or knock them out before they’re aware of intruders on the ship, we can avoid a fight.”

Simultaneously: “No, thanks.” “Yeah, no.”

Beckman looks at them incredulously as Shanks resists the childish urge to share a grin with the boy. “You can’t seriously be thinking about taking them all on.”

“We’ll be fine,” Shanks says.

“Some of these pirates are Grand Line veterans,” Beckman stresses. “A lot of us haven’t been in the Grand Line long, but Captain Pic was born and raised there for nearly forty years.”

“He’s just a Paradise pirate though, isn’t he?” Shanks asks, then says in a lower voice, “Besides, that cell was seastone. The hinges might not have been, but we both saw that right?”

Advanced Armament Haki from the slip of a boy running with open glee beside them.

Beckman still looks unconvinced, but he doesn’t stop running. He says, “We still need a game plan.”

“Beat them up!” the boy yells.

“Ah—” Shanks remembers something. “We’re gonna have to be real quick when we start fighting as well. The moment I draw my sword, we’re on a time limit.”

Beckman gives him a weird look, but doesn’t ask—but the boy does say, “Ah, that’s the same for me.” He laughs lightly. “Grandpa’s gonna wake up when I start fighting too.”

That’s not ominous at all.

“We’ll try to stealthily take them out anyway,” Beckman says, and is once again bulldozed over by the boy.

“Too slow! If we make noise, then they’ll all come out and we can fight them all at once.”

There is… logic to that. Shanks is surprised by it.

Beckman’s jaw tightens. “You’re confident you can beat them?”

The boy cackles. “It’s not like they’re Kaido.”

Scary. Shanks can’t help but laugh as well, and that only makes the grin on the boy’s face grow wider.

Beckman sighs. “You’re both Grand Line children then.”

They emerge onto the docks and Beckman stops to scan the boats. He points at a big caraval, “That one.”

And the boy - jumps.

Shanks spares a moment to gape as he flies through the sky, dust swirled up around them from the force of the Haki-enforced leap. He follows at a run, launching himself up onto the ship as well, eyes still on the curve of the boy’s trajectory. Shanks lands on the ship just in time to see the boy’s knees land in a pirate’s chest, falling onto the deck with a great crashing sound.

A lookout on the crow’s nest starts shouting warnings, but the sound of a gunshot from the docks silences him. Shanks whistles in appreciation at the skilled shot, before a pirate bursts through the caravel’s door and Shanks kicks him overboard by his chest, his yells echoing across the harbour as he falls into the water with a splash.

The pirates start climbing out of the woodworks, some of them swaying - and Shanks barely feels the hangover anymore, adrenaline making him feel more alive than ever, than he had in that bar fight, than he had in a long time since the Roger Pirates disbanded.

A pirate with a mohawk draws a sword, and that finally prompts Shanks to draw his.

On the other side of the island, a sharp Haki awakens, and the hawk-like gaze of a swordsman’s Observation falls on him. Shanks feels chills down his spine as that presence starts moving in their direction.

The swordsman is disarmed almost too easily, and Shanks pushes him overboard as well. The pirate trying to come up on him is shot before she gets the chance to actually sneak up on him, and Shanks nods in Beckman’s direction before he moves on to the next pirate.

The fight is easy enough that Shanks can look at the force of nature that is the boy who strong-armed a promise out of him, ploughing through his opponents like they’re nothing. He fights like he’s not constrained to the earth, bouncing and flipping over his foes, spinning and rolling and kicking like gravity is just a suggestion and he can do whatever the hell he wants regardless of the laws of physics. He bounces skulls together, laughing as if that’s the funniest thing he’s seen. He falls to the floor full-bodied just to kick out someone’s legs, spinning on his hands to kick the person behind him. He whoops with joy as he dodges and spins mid-air, limbs flying in a blur. He fights like it’s the most fun he’s ever had, fights like it’s the most free he’ll ever be.

Shanks runs someone through with his sword and stares. That sense of familiarity returns, and this time he can almost reach out for it. It’s like he knows the boy and—all their interactions flash through his mind—it’s like the boy knows him.

Shanks realises very suddenly that he still does not know the boy’s name.

Beckman vaults onto the ship, aiming for the last pirate standing, the one who is undoubtedly the captain, but he doesn’t shoot. Shanks sees why a moment later when the boy ducks under the captain’s sword, crouching before springing up to headbutt his chin a moment later. The captain stumbles back, blood bursting from his mouth in what is probably a bit tongue as he cries out in pain. The boy winds up for another punch, but there’s a moment of hesitation in his eyes—he still punches without pause, but Shanks sees his other hand grabbing the captain’s collar to prevent him from flying away even as he’s knocked unconscious. Shanks follows the boy’s eyes to where the ship’s mast is right behind the captain, and would undoubtedly take his weight if he is sent flying. Surprisingly thoughtful, but also - not that surprising to Shanks, when he really thinks about it. That stops him short.

The boy throws the captain overboard and onto the docks.

“Yosh. Let’s go!”

Shanks is keeping an eye on the familiar Haki making its way towards him when his attention is caught by another worryingly familiar Haki signature, and it’s also heading straight for the docks. He swears.

“Yeah, we gotta go!” he yells, jumping to unmoor the boat. The sky is lightening and Shanks vaguely recalls the boy’s time limit. “Do you know how to sail?” he asks the boy.

“Duh!”

“We need to head east for now, get away from land first!”

They move around a bit too frantically as they unmoor and raise the sails for departure, doing the job of a much larger crew. This is the point where Shanks realises they should have probably stolen a much smaller ship, and that there is no way they’re heading into the Grand Line with this small of a crew.

Some of the pirates that have climbed their way up to the docks start yelling and making a commotion. Shanks’ Observation is working overtime to keep track of the two dangerous signatures heading their way as well as all the people waking up in the surrounding ships.

Beckman takes the helm, and the boy hangs dutifully from the sail. There’s an experience there in the way he navigates the caravel, and Shanks thinks back on all the contradictions of this boy.

“Hey,” he asks, finally. “What’s your name?”

The boy looks at him, blinking. “Hmm? Oh!” And then he laughs, grin stretching into a wide, familiar shape. “I’m Monkey D. Luffy! I’m the next Pirate King!”

Oh. Luffy laughs at his slack-jawed surprise, laughing and laughing and— oh. There’s an infectious joy to his whole-body laughter, an irresistible charm to the edge of his D-shaped grin. It’s Captain’s smile. It’s Captain’s joy, his freedom, his words. Shanks is hungover; he’s seeing double; he’s hallucinating; he’s fourteen and his Captain is the freest man in the world; he’s fifteen and this boy is throwing his words out into the wind as they break free into the open ocean. A frayed breath catches in his throat at the sound of Luffy’s laugh.

He’s an incomprehensible D. who burst into Shanks’ life and shocked him from his grief just in time to drag him into stealing a ship and setting sail with just three people, all the while bulldozing over any attempts to reason with him. Shanks doesn’t even know him - but he does. He does. That sense of familiarity that’s been niggling at the back of his mind since he met this boy is his Captain’s ghost staring at him from the face bearing a D-shaped smile. Shanks cannot help but stare, a confused mix of awe and grief stirring up within him. He doesn’t know what to say, what to do. Well, he does. But before he can, a bellow from one of the dreaded Haki signatures he felt earlier makes itself known.

“LUFFY!” Garp the fucking Fist shouts, his voice echoing across the water.

“What the fuck,” Beckman says softly from the helm. Luffy lets go of the rope, bounding to lean over the railings and wave at the Marine Vice-Admiral.

“I’m heading off now, Grandpa!”

Shanks echoes Beckman’s sentiment out loud.

“Get back here you little shit!” the—and Shanks cannot stress this enough— Marine Hero yells.

Luffy laughs, unconcerned. “No way—I’m not going back to Marineford! I’ll see you later!”

Shanks is starting to regret making that deal with Luffy now.

Garp lets out a frustrated scream and Shanks watches him jump on a random boat and grab something. The Haki of the swordsman he’s been avoiding is getting further now, not wanting to tangle with the man who went toe-to-toe with the Pirate King.

“Is he - holy shit!” Shanks yelps, drawing his sword.

Garp is holding a cannonball—and Shanks has seen what damage a cannonball from Garp can do. There’s only two people he knows who can consistently block those Haki-covered projectiles, and it’s Roger and Rayleigh. He’s not confident he can deflect one, nor will he be able to slice it in half lest both halves sink through the hull. He’s so sure that their escape will be thwarted right here and now.

Garp throws the cannonball with a yell and - yep, it’s coated in Armament alright. Shanks calls out, “Brace yourself!”

It comes sailing straight for Luffy. Shanks reaches out to yank him down, but Luffy takes a step back. Winds up his shoulder. And throws a punch.

The cannonball lands in the middle of his Haki-coated fist.

And shatters.

Shanks holds onto his straw hat as the force of the clash rocks the boat, a shockwave sent out across the water and whipping up the waves. The cannonball shatters backwards too, away from the force of Luffy’s punch instead of in the same direction as its momentum. The projectile’s Haki is definitely weaker than Garp’s first-hand Advanced Armament—Shanks notes this because even if Garp is not the kind of person to go easy on his grandson, he refuses to believe that this boy won the test of Armament against Garp the Fist.

The Vice-Admiral yells again, and Shanks’ heart drops when he sees his arm grow black with Haki. Fortunately for them, his Marine subordinates start dog-piling him to stop him from throwing a Galaxy Fist off of Loguetown’s coast and wrecking the marine ecosystem within a klick’s vicinity of him.

Luffy laughs again, and Shanks wonders how it wasn’t immediately obvious he was a D. the moment they met. The figures on the dock start to shrink, and a gust of wind comes to aid their escape like the world itself ushering them on.

“Ooh, lucky!” Luffy says delightedly, stumbling to the figurehead of the ship. “Say, wasn’t that fun?”

He turns his grin back on Shanks as he asks the question. The sun rises in the east behind him, and Shanks is, for a moment, blinded.

Monkey D. Luffy—the boy who shares the Captain’s name, the Captain’s grin, the boy who found Shanks on the day after he lost his Captain, the boy who declared he will be the next Pirate King—his entire existence is a providence. For a moment, Shanks thinks he can see the string of fate tying them together, guiding them to this meeting that was always meant to happen. For a moment, he thinks he hears his Captain.

None of this is coincidence, my boy—this is destiny.

“I’m Shanks,” he says what he has been meaning to since the moment Luffy first introduced himself. “Wanna turn the world upside down with me?”

Chapter Text

Beck realises, after the numb shock of having the wrath of the Marine Hero brought down on his head wears off, that he may have lost his mind.

“There’s some supplies left but I’m pretty sure this crew used up most of it for their party last night. Can you cook, Luffy?”

He tries to think back on the brief loss of sanity that possessed him to follow the two seachildren out of that cell and back to the ship. In the dark, under the sliver of moonlight shining through the barred windows, the two of them had seemed larger than life, older than children, wild as Sea Kings—and when the redheaded one looked back at him expectantly, something seized him in that moment to follow. An immediate urge, a feeling that something important would pass him by if he did not grab hold of it right then.

“Nope!”

“Uh - I can cook. Probably! I’ve helped with food prep before. Should be easy.”

And then the twin terrors fell like lightning on his old crew, swift and indiscriminate and very, very lethal. Beck’s captain - or rather, the captain of that crew (because he wasn’t ever really Beck’s captain, not since he took him from Iruka’s crew and burned their Jolly Roger right in front of them) is a pirate worth eighteen million, and while that’s a mid-range bounty in Paradise, it’s definitely big enough to overwhelm any pirate in the East Blue. What they didn’t account for was that there were also going to be much stronger pirates in the East Blue much with the same goal they had of watching the Pirate King’s execution—and they certainly didn’t account for two New World teenagers wrecking their shit just like that.

“Hey, Beckman, you gonna come eat?”

Something about the way the two teens met each other and the spark of a flame seemed to ignite must have made Beck lose his mind temporarily. Drawn in by the two’s sheer charisma, maybe, or else what could explain the moment of irrationality where he readily led them to his ship full of Grand Line pirates? He knew it was a bad idea, knew it was insanity, but the utter irreverence in the way they treated the prospect of a heavily disadvantaged battle just made Beck - believe. What should have been arrogance was just absolute certainty in victory.

It was ridiculously enthralling.

“Beckmaaaaan. Yooooooooo - Beck!”

Beck startles, jumping slightly. He realises then that his knuckles have turned white from the force with which he’s gripping the helm.

“We need to set a course,” he says. “We can’t just go in a direction and hope for the best.”

Shanks blinks at him. “Yeah. I’m gonna cook.”

Beck does not sigh again. He feels like he’s been sighing the whole night. He’ll become a professional not-sigher by the time he’s spent more than a day with these two with how many times he’s wanted to sigh—every other minute, that is—and how many times he’s held back—almost every other minute. “Wind’s changing,” he says. “We’ll head north-east for now, and I need the sails five degrees port.”

Shanks smiles. “You hear that, Luffy?”

“Yup!”

The mast and sails make a worrying creaking sound as Shanks and Luffy pull on the ropes, and Beck cringes, knowing instinctively this ship is on its last leg. Once he has secured the helm, he hops down the stairs to the deck and ducks into the galley. Luffy, after helping with the sails, has gone back to sitting at the figurehead of the ship while Shanks is rifling through the cupboards in the kitchen.

“Can you cook?” Beck asks.

“Well. I was a cabin boy.”

Beck raises a brow, and Shanks rolls his eyes.

“It can’t be that hard to make fried rice. Rice, scallions, onions, garlic, egg… uh.”

“Oyster sauce and soy sauce.”

“Yeah! I just don’t know where anything is.”

Beck doesn’t sigh. “Just have the rations for now.”

Shanks ambles around the kitchen, finally finding where they keep the rations, and Beck takes that chance to find the East Blue map someone must have gotten at Loguetown—he wasn’t the only navigator on the ship, and luckily not the only responsible one. He might have quit pirating at all if that was the case.

Beck takes the map from the captain’s quarters to lay it across the galley’s dining table. It’s an official World Government-issued map, much more comprehensive than any map of the Grand Line from the WG can offer, but Beck knows how half-assed these maps still are compared to a skilled cartographer who’s actually navigated the seas themself. The biggest land masses in the East Blue are recorded along with the occasional island and important landmark, but he’s willing to bet there’s a wealth of islands not recorded here.

The closest island from here is the Oykot Kingdom, but with its size and its status as a kingdom—probably even a seat on the Reverie—there’s bound to be Marines on almost every port they can dock at. But on the other hand, the Conomi Islands might be too far to reach with their current supplies and the wind direction.

Fuck. They have three people on the ship. The rotation’s going to be a nightmare. Beck places a compass as a paperweight on one corner of the map and a spare journal on one corner as he starts writing down calculations.

“How were you going to head back on Reverse Mountain with this ship?” Shanks asks as he places ration biscuits and cheese on the little space left of the table.

“We weren’t,” Beck says absently, “Pic’s plan was to get a bigger ship in the East Blue.”

“Ah,” Shanks says in understanding. “Not willing to pay Water 7 prices?”

“Something like that. You ever been to East Blue?”

“I’ve been to all the Blues at least once. Though - I was really young last time we came here.”

Beck wonders what caused the end of Shanks’ crew which, if what he says about being a pirate his entire life is true, has been sailing for at least fifteen years. From what he’s said, Beck infers they’re New World pirates as well—New World pirates who have sailed all the seas. That’s an impressive resume even as a cabin boy.

“We can either head to Oykot Kingdom or the Conomi Archipelago first,” Beck says, and Shanks moves around the table to look at the map.

“What do you recommend?”

Beck shrugs. “Personally, I’d rather head for Conomi to avoid the Marines. Especially—” he pauses.

Shanks looks up. “What is it?”

Beck says, “Are we going to have Garp the Fist on our tail?”

Shanks opens his mouth, then closes it. He’s thinking about it hard, hand coming up to his chin.

“Luffy!” Shanks yells at the galley door, and what follows is the comical sound of flip flops slapping against the deck as he nears.

“Food!” he yells as he bursts through the door, bee-lining for the ration biscuits and stuffing a whole one in his mouth. He frowns. “No meat?”

“Not now—hey, is your grandpa going to be hunting us down anytime soon?”

Luffy swallows. “Yeah, definitely.”

Beck closes his eyes and mourns his immediate future.

“Well,” Shanks says simply. “Should we hide in the Grand Line—”

“No way,” Beck interrupts. “This ship is not going to survive Reverse Mountain, and the Ryloth Passage is not going to be open for another month.”

“We don’t need to take the Ryloth Passage,” Shanks says. “The Sea Kings won’t be a problem.”

The Pickle Pirates—name courtesy of Captain Wurm “Pic” Pickle—took the Ryloth Passage into the East Blue like any other ship that doesn't have the Marines’ seastone coating. The Calm Belt has always been the only way out of the Grand Line, but unless you have Conqueror’s Haki it’s a much more complicated process to even try to navigate it. There are navigators who make a living off of taking ships through the Calm Belt, familiarising themselves with the nests and movement patterns of the Sea Kings down to the very hour in order to avoid them all, but they’re notoriously expensive. It took a lot of information gathering around the islands along the northern belt of Paradise to even find out the existence of the Ryloth Passage—a once-in-a-full-moon occurrence where a small channel in the Calm Belt is clear of Sea Kings, a straight path from an island northeast of Jaya right into the Sambas Region. It took a lot of work, a lot of manoeuvring, and a very stressful day as they rowed through it, looking out for any stray Sea Kings not following the pattern of migration.

And Shanks says it won’t be a problem. Of course the fifteen year old Beck decided to follow in a brief lapse of sanity is implying he has Conqueror’s Haki. There are wires in his brain he might have to disconnect in these two’s presence to understand them—the one connecting common sense to reason—and he’s already realised this in the not-even-two-hours he’s known them.

“Even then,” Beck says, massaging the bridge of his nose, “we don’t have enough manpower to row across the Calm Belt.”

“Ah.”

“So we just need more people on the crew,” Luffy says, stuffing way too much cheese in his mouth. Beck moves it away from his reach.

Shanks spins to face Luffy. “Hang on, are we a crew then?”

“No way.”

“What?” he frowns. “Why not?”

Beck doesn’t deign to remind him that just an hour earlier he was still offended at the prospect of joining Luffy’s crew.

“We can’t have two captains,” Luffy replies as if it’s obvious.

“There are co-captains,” Shanks says, then winces as soon as it’s left his mouth, though Beck can’t tell why.

“Shanks has his own crew, and I have my own,” Luffy says.

“Do I get a say?” Beck pipes up, and the both of them turn to him, blinking.

Shanks scratches the back of his head. “You wanna make a case for being Captain?”

“No,” Beck says immediately. He’s never been a leader, content to support and then follow, but he’s not sure he wants to continue down the path he’s been dragged onto by the two teens, passive and just letting them sweep him into their rhythm. “I just - it’s barely been an hour since I mutinied.”

Shanks looks at Luffy, but Luffy doesn’t say anything. He looks back at Beck, and he seems to gather his words, “What do you want to do?”

What does he want to do? He’s not really got anyone back in North Blue. Maybe he’ll find his way back to Iruka’s crew, but he knows that Davy Back Fight did irreparable damage to the crew itself and Beck’s relationship with them in the first place. He hasn’t wanted anything in a long time. He’s just been… surviving.

Shanks sees something in his hesitation, and he amends his question, “What’s your dream?”

-

Let’s go out to sea, Iruka had said as they sat on the calm water in their tiny fishing boat. Let’s go out to sea and die young.

Tell me about it when you get back, Beck had replied, cigarette held between his teeth. I’m living a perfectly average lifespan.

You’re no fun, Beck. Come on - don’t you want to sail the high seas? Find Noland’s mountain of gold, fight dangerous battles, conquer Sea Kings? Don’t you want to never be under any government’s thumb again?

And enable your death wish? No, thanks.

Iruka had stopped to reel in a line, a trout falling into their boat. They’d paused the conversation just so Iruka could quickly spike the fish and put it in the cooler with the other. That’s dinner, he’d said, then turned back to Beck. But think about it. Don’t you want more than this life?

What is there to want?

It was a year later when they’d set sail. I’m going to die in battle, Iruka had promised. I’m going to die in such glorious battle that people will be telling my story for centuries.

And I’ll be there to make sure it doesn’t happen tomorrow, Beck had said, exasperated and fond.

He hadn’t gone to sea because he wanted something. He’d gone to sea because it was Iruka. It was Iruka, so of course he had to go. By the time he’d tasted the open ocean for the first time, he was never going to be anywhere else but out there.

-

“I’d like to find my friend,” Beck says.

Shanks smiles. “Just that?” It’s not condescending, not belittling this already little dream. It's curiosity.

And because Shanks told him in that cell that he’ll be free on the sea or he’ll die trying, Beck knows he’ll understand him when he says, “And then I’m going to die on the sea.”

Something glimmers in Shanks’ eyes. He asks, “Will you join my crew?”

And they’re going to the Grand Line anyway. And Shanks is going to spend the rest of his life on the seas anyway. What’s the point of trying to join another pirate crew when there’s one right here? Beck says, “Alright.”

Shanks’ grin widens, but Luffy lets out a cheer that has Shanks glaring at him. “Hey, he’s joining my crew, not yours.”

Luffy snickers, then sticks out his tongue childishly at Shanks. “I already got the best navigator in the world.” Beck doesn’t point out that he’s not really that skilled of a navigator, just that he can navigate somewhat. 

“Oh yeah? Where are they now?”

“Nami’s not born yet! I’m waiting for her and everyone else right now.”

“I - what?”

“That’s all well and good,” Beck says, not acknowledging that nonsensical statement, “but we still have to figure out a course first. And an escape route.”

Shanks falls silent, crossing his arms. Luffy somehow got his hands on the rest of the cheese.

“Luffy,” Shanks says, “I made you a promise, didn’t I? I’ll take you to Water 7.”

“You’ll sail with me to Water 7,” Luffy corrects, rather arbitrarily.

“When do you need to get there by?”

Luffy tilts his head. “When?”

“When do you - well - is there a time limit?”

He pauses, thinking. “No.”

Shanks nods, steepling his fingers together. “Here’s what I’m thinking: we take it slow through the East Blue. Get a new ship, gather a crew fit for the Grand Line, and then we head for Reverse Mountain. Two or three months at least; half a year at most.”

Beck doesn’t think Shanks knows the definition of ‘take it slow’.

“That sound good, Luffy?”

Luffy’s face is still blank as he thinks. Beck thinks this is a very unorthodox way of beginning a voyage.

After a long moment, Lufffy says, “I waited a long time to find Brook. And Brook’s been alone for a long time already.” He looks up. “We can wait a little longer. And,” he adds with a smile stretching across his face, “I wanna sail with Shanks longer too.”

Shanks coughs and turns away so Beck can’t see his face turning the same shade as his hair. “That’s settled then,” he says, matching Luffy’s grin.

Beck says, “Then we need to get a new ship—”

“Oh!” Luffy interrupts, “I know a place!”

“... you do.”

“Syrup Village has the best craftsmen in the East Blue.” Luffy looks at the map, finger poised as if to point it out. There’s a long moment as they wait for him to do just that. However, after an extended pause, he just sits back in his chair, hand dropping. He says. “I don’t know where it is.”

Beck feels justified in face-palming at that.

It takes a couple minutes for Luffy to detail a nonsensical route from Dawn Island to ‘the chunky lady’s ship’ to ‘the town with the Marines where I met Zoro’ to ‘Orange Village where Chouchou is’ and so on, and then to finally wrestle the ‘Lizard Island’ out of his memory and for Beck to connect that with the Gecko Islands, which finally seems to jog Luffy’s memory. It’s an endeavour, and Beck can’t help the realisation that Luffy might be an idiot. Shanks seems to find the whole thing endlessly amusing and was no help whatsoever.

The Gecko Islands is about the same distance from Oykot as Conomi is, so restocking at Oykot is their best option. But Beck has been sceptical about this ship—the cheapest one Captain Pic could get his hands on after losing their galleon and half their men—even making it to Loguetown in the first place, let alone going anywhere else after that, and he voices his concerns. Perhaps it would be best to find a shipwright in Oykot.

Luffy says, “She’s working her hardest. It’s been a short voyage for her, but that’s all the more reason she’ll carry us the rest of the way. Isn’t that right, Razor?”

The wood of the ship groans as it crests a wave. Beck tries not to think about it.

“I’ll set a course,” he says, standing up. At least he’s got his cigarettes back now.

-

Oykot is in sight within the next two days when Luffy squints at the horizon and says, “Oh! It’s the Sea King island.”

Shanks looks at him, confused and probably a little concerned. “What?”

“Yeah,” Luffy laughs. “Nami showed me her map of it and the whole island looks like a Sea King!”

Beck thinks back to how it was drawn on the East Blue map, and supposes one could see it that way. They’ll need a complete book of East Blue maps when they stop off at one of the ports to actually get a closer look at the islands.

“We should dock at the horn,” Luffy continues. “If we go into the neck then we’ll be trapped on the way out.”

“Have you been here?” Shanks asks.

Luffy opens his mouth, then pauses. After a beat, he says, “Not this time.”

Okay. Beck and Shanks trade a look and Beck just adds that to the tally of Luffy’s oddities he’s been keeping up.

Luffy points out the horn as they near, and when Beck takes them closer, he can see the row of headlands and broken-off stacks that can be shaped like the crested spikes atop a Sea King, and he thinks he understands what Luffy means. The ‘neck’ would be a narrow sea then, the landmass shaped like a rearing beast. Luffy and Shanks furl the largest sail, the one with the Jolly Roger, as they enter the harbour.

“I’ll pay the harbourmaster. Someone needs to be lookout—”

“Not it!” Luffy shouts, leaping down onto the docks and bounding off before any of them can protest.

“Two hours!” Beck shouts after him, harried. He’s a kid in a new town and way too carefree about it and Beck can’t help worrying. He’s hanging off the railings by the time Luffy disappears around a corner, and he sighs. They’ll deal with it if he’s in trouble.

He then looks at Shanks.

“Wha - I’m the captain!”

“And I know what we need to stock up on.”

Shanks groans, but doesn’t protest as Beck hops down. “Besides,” Beck adds, lighting up a cigarette. He doesn’t say any more than that, giving Shanks a meaningful look, and his Captain understands, exaggerated pout smoothing over as he looks across the harbour—and all the ships docked there.

“Yeah,” he says simply, expression blank.

They’re not the only pirates docked here.

“Be careful,” Shanks says, plopping himself at the bow of the ship.

“Aye, Captain.”

Beck catches Shanks’ wince at the address, but doesn’t say anything else, heading down to find the harbourmaster that’s fortunately very close to where they’re docked. He keeps an eye on the many larger ships, watching the sailors carefully. Most of them are stocking up, moving crates up into their ships, and they’re just as tense as every other crew, eyes darting around as if they’re doing something criminal. Beck doesn’t think they’re transporting anything other than necessities, but with how many crooks are packed into this port town, it’s no wonder they’re all on high alert. Most of them would be the ones who took off right after the execution and docked here for the night, he reckons.

There’s a small group of four - sailors crowded around the entrance to a small shack with the word HARBOURMASTER on it and Beck slows to a stop a ways away. There’s a commotion inside, and he waits, watching as someone storms out and the group part for them.

“Bah!” the man who is obviously a pirate spits on the ground. “Just because they’re packed here doesn’t mean they can rip us off!”

“Did you pay—”

“Of course I paid, dumbass!”

“Okay, I know, but last time we docked and you didn’t, the captain—”

“Well, the Captain doesn’t manage our finances now, does he?”

All the other pirates surrounding the first man shift nervously, but they follow him as he stalks off, muttering out loud.

“I swear, this town’s not going to survive the day,” Beck hears one of the pirates say to the others as they pass him by. The sailors nearby eye the group carefully as well as they walk off.

Beck looks up at the sky. They could very well leave for the Gecko Islands before night if they want to be safe from anything on their tail, but sailing in shifts with just the three of them grows tiring. Still, Beck isn’t sure he wants to see the tension break in the port town anytime soon, especially with how unused to pirates the East Blue probably is. Beck makes his way into the shack.

There’s a middle-aged woman sitting at a desk and she jumps at his presence, but she relaxes slightly after a moment, the fact that he’s come alone probably helping him not look like a pirate.

“Tough morning?” Beck remarks, and the harbourmaster heaves a sigh.

“You got no idea,” she says and beckons him in, putting down her pipe before crossing to the other side of her desk. “You dockin’?”

Beck and the harbourmaster exchange funds—and it’s pricey for a night, but the Razor Hammer held all the funds for a crew five times their size so they can afford it many times over. As he waits for her to sort out her charts, he looks over the papers strewn across her desk.

“Read the news coo out on the sea, boy?” she asks.

“We didn’t get today’s paper yet,” Beck says. The harbourmaster huffs, picking up the paper on top of the pile and flashing him the headline: PIRATE KING DEAD! The End Or The Beginning Of The Pirate Era?

“We got pirates comin’ in in droves since last night,” she says, picking up her pipe. “The king’s thinking of sending troops to Akaso to fortify in case the pirates here act out, but they might hafta split with cities on the East Sea as well.”

“I see,” Beck says. “Have the Marines been called?”

“Sure,” she shrugs, blowing smoke out in front of her. Beck’s smoking as well so the little shack fills up with it to the top. “We got a Marine base in the East Sea, but it’s not like they’re useful for much, and seas know how many other cities closer to that side got pirates up to the gills. ‘Sides, as long as the lot of them are too busy gettin’ in pissin’ contests wit’ each other, the pirates are better business than they are nuisances. They’re not the problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s the thugs,” she says, pointing south, “the kids out on Odiakkoh. That’s the little island across the channel; you’d have seen it on the way in from Polestar.”

“Local pirates?” Beck asks.

“Pirates, gangs, whatever you call ‘em. They’ve always made trouble ‘round these parts, but the government’s gotta keep the balance, y’know? That’s how it is everywhere. No, the trouble is that damned Roger’s words.”

“The One Piece.”

“Right,” she spits. “Been since last night, yeah? They came up here to watch the execution screening and afterwards they was wanting to go out to sea, shouting-screamin’ about finding the One Piece and all that. Says they’d be wanting to be real pirates, you see? Pillagin’ and rapin’ and doin’ whatever they want!”

The woman’s accent slips deeper as she rants about them, waving her pipe around. She’s nearly shouting, and she jabs the pipe in Beck’s direction very pointedly. “See, it’s not these vacationin’ pirates we’s worried ‘bout—it’s those boys out on Odiakkoh. It’s the romance that Roger’s bringin’ to bein’ a criminal. The younguns here ain’t ‘boutta join up a gang, but if they says they’s headin’ for the Grand Line, you betcha the good young men of Akaso will join up readily.”

Of course it’s not the pirates being whipped up into a frenzy that the World Government are concerned about—not too much anyway—it’s more the new pirates popping up because of the allure of adventure, of a mythical treasure of the Pirate King. It’s been a day since the execution, and that mentality is already cropping up even in the East Blue. Maybe especially the East Blue, as the home ocean of the Pirate King, proving even those from the weakest seas can do anything.

Hopefully they won’t stay here long enough to witness whatever’s about to go down, the logical conclusion to the air of tension hanging over the port town. Beck’s about to ask another question when there’s a shout from outside.

He’s finished with his business anyways so he bids her farewell to go check out the commotion—and she follows anyway, probably to do something about the commotion too. 

Out on the street parallel to the docks, there’s a crowd forming, and someone shouting something. Beck starts heading over when he sees Luffy standing at the edge of the crowd. He starts walking faster, glancing in the direction of The Razor Hammer where Shanks’ figure watches from the bow as well, meeting his eyes momentarily before Shanks looks back at the crowd. Beck comes to stand next to Luffy.

He’s holding four skewers of grilled meat and five sticks that probably used to be skewers as well. It’s been minutes since he left, but from what Beck’s seen of his appetite in the past days it was high time for him to go find food anyway so that must have been what he went to do. Still, since Beck has let him out of sight when they docked, he keeps waiting for something big to happen, so he’s pleasantly surprised Luffy’s not done anything like break two people out of Marine holdings cells and steal a pirate ship again.

“—so take me with you!” Beck hears the tail-end of a speech.

There’s a moment of silence and Beck looks out over the crowd—he’s tall enough to see over the relatively short East Blue natives—and sees a man bowing in the middle of the street in the direction of a group of people.

The silence is broken by laughing from the group—an eccentric bunch wearing gaudy clothes, fur jackets, and a wealth of jewellery. Beck can tell immediately that they’re greatly disliked by the people from how the crowd shifts and whispers to themselves while still trying to hide their disdain. Despite the laughter at whatever the man’s declaration was, however, the man did not lift from his bow, stubbornly standing there in that difficult position.

One of the gang members—and he’s sure they’re the people from Odiakkoh that the harbourmaster mentioned earlier—a woman with hair dyed neon yellow, stops laughing just to ask in a shrill voice, “What’s your name again, boy?”

“Wesk! Ma’am,” the man shouts, still bowing.

“Well, Wesk, the Owa Family won’t say no to such a promising young lad, now, will we?” the woman says, drawling. Her smile is sharp, and her eyes rake over the man’s form.

A small figure breaks through the crowd, rushing for the bowing man, “Big brother!”

The man puts a hand out to stop the young girl with the same blue hair as him from bowling into him, and he hisses, “Go away, Jen.”

“No! You can’t join them!”

“Oh?” the woman says, cocking her head. “Who’s this cutie?”

The man, half-out of his bow now, blanches. “No one! Ma’am!” He says something to the little girl in a lower voice, and Beck can’t hear from here.

“Your daughter?” the woman asks. “Little sister?”

Wesk flinches, and the little girl pushes to stand in front of him. The man’s already pale face goes paler in horror as he reaches out for her. He’s too late, because she’s already shouting, “Go away! You people take everything and I’m not going to let you take my big brother!”

Beck watches as the majority of the crowd looks on in horror. A few of them attempt to step out, calling for the little girl, calling out for ‘Jen’, but other people pull them back, and Beck thinks that these gang members are not that different from pirates after all. The fear hanging over the street is palpable.

Luffy chews on a skewer loudly.

“Oh?” the woman says. She doesn’t look too bothered by the comments, but the other gang members’ faces look dark with the promise of violence. The woman makes a gesture that might seem like a casual movement of her hands, but with it a restraint visibly passes over the men behind her. She’s a prominent leader of this gang then if a simple gesture can have that effect on them. She steps forward, and Wesk immediately drops to his knees, dragging his sister down with him to push her head against the cobblestone alongside his own.

“Please forgive her,” he says, forehead pressed to the ground. “She’s young - she doesn’t think about what she’s saying.”

“It must be the truth if she’s not thinking then,” the woman says, looking down on them. “Isn’t she speaking from the heart?”

Beck isn’t sure he wants to see a little girl get murdered in the middle of the street, but he’s also not sure if he wants to interfere. He’s not that kind of person, and they haven’t even gotten the supplies they needed yet. If they have to depart immediately to get away from a gang that seems to exert a significant influence over this town, they might just be in trouble.

Beck looks over to his Captain on the bow of their ship. It’s difficult to see his expression from here, but he’s got a hand on his sword as he looks at the commotion from afar. Beck sighs, but he skirts around the edge of the crowd anyway, putting himself in the position to see a signal from Shanks and to get a clear shot at the woman when he gets it. 

(His first mistake is taking his eye off Luffy, but he doesn’t realise this yet.)

“Hey, Wesk,” the woman continues, and Beck thinks she’s about to monologue. “Do you know what it means to be a part of the Owa Family?”

The man doesn’t respond, and it's good instinct to know when someone like her isn’t actually looking for an answer.

“It means you only have one family—us. It means you discard your blood, your name, your dream. And when we hit the seas, you’re discarding your home as well. Are you willing to do that?”

The little girl struggles, “Big bro—”

“Yes,” Wesk says. “Anything for my dream. Ma’am.”

The woman laughs, and it’s a shrill, ugly sound. “Didn’t I just say? Your dream is nothing, boy! We’re going to make Boss Owa the Pirate King and we don’t need you going off - what - trying to slay Ichoro again? It doesn’t exist! It’s a myth! We’re not playing pirates and—”

“Hey.”

Everyone looks at the source of the voice. Beck swears.

Luffy has broken through the crowd, and he stands in front of them, in the empty space of the street they’ve made for this confrontation. He’s staring blankly at the woman.

“What?” she spits. “Are you another country bumpkin here to join the Family? I’m getting bored of this.”

“Don’t make fun of his dream,” Luffy says. Beck looks over at Shanks, but Shanks seems to be… more relaxed than earlier. Beck squints at him.

The woman whirls on Luffy. “Who are you to tell me what to do?”

“Who are you to tell him his dream is nothing?”

The air is tense with it. The woman is so incredibly puzzled by Luffy’s response, and she laughs, “What?”

“I don’t like people like you.”

“Madame Kiko,” one of the gang members growl, “Let me at him.”

The woman stares at Luffy. She doesn’t say anything to the other thugs, tilting her head as if trying to figure the boy out. Beck will have to wish her good luck, because even he hasn’t yet.

She says, “Do you know who you’re talking to, boy?”

“Nope.” Luffy turns to look at the two siblings still kneeling on the ground. “You should probably run now. I think she’s going to attack me.”

“You—” Kiko whips out her gun, and Beck shoots it out of her hand.

Screams go up in the crowd as that first gunshot rings out and they start running, trying to get away from the scene of violence. 

The gang members rush towards Luffy, but it’s useless. Luffy weaves around them like they’re not even running, shoving them into each other, letting them trip over each other. Madame Kiko is clutching her hand, fingers probably broken from the pistol being wrenched out of her grip, screaming through gritted teeth. Luffy steps towards her and sucker punches her.

Shanks lands next to Beck as if out of thin air, and the stumbling thugs roar in rage as they rush back at Luffy. Shanks says, “Get the man and the girl to the ship.”

He’s watching Luffy, no urgency in his frame at all.

There’s none in Luffy’s fighting either. He’s… bored.

Beck is reminded that this is a Blues island. These are Blue Sea fighters. Luffy hadn’t broken a sweat fighting the Pic Pirates, Grand Line pirates. He’d shattered a cannonball that Garp the Fist threw.

Beck’s been worried. They’re teenagers, barely in Luffy’s case, and he doesn’t want the boy getting into trouble on his own, but for the first time Beck realises they’re not really… children.

They’re strong, the realisation comes to him again, and it really sinks in now. They’re strong and they’re reliable.

The anxiety that’s been plaguing him since he mutinied—the uncertainty of a future with what was barely a crew—seems to just… dissipate. There’s a calm overtaking him. Yeah, Shanks looks depressed as all hell when he thinks no one is looking and Luffy might actually be clinically insane with all the things that come out of his mouth - but they’re strong. And Beck’s known longer than he’s been a pirate that being strong means being free.

And these two are as free as they come.

“Aye—” he recalls the face Shanks made when he called him Captain “—Chief.”

Shanks doesn’t notice or doesn’t acknowledge the quick replacement. 

There’s a relief in following orders and Beck goes to crouch next to the siblings. Wesk is covering his sister with his whole body, and Beck puts his hand on his shoulder, making him look up.

“Come with me,” Beck says. “Luffy won’t be long, but you might want to get out of the line of fire.”

Beck starts moving before he even gets confirmation, and that seems like the right move because Wesk is spurred on so he won’t be left behind, carrying his sister as he rushes after him.

“You know that boy?” Wesk asks, and the tone of his voice has Beck glancing at him. His eyebrows are furrowed; he looks pissed.

“Yes.”

“Look, you guys shouldn’t have stepped in. She was just annoyed and we would have been fine and now she’s pissed off and—”

“ Would you have been fine?” Beck raises a brow.

“No, we wouldn’t,” the little girl says, sniffling. She’s pulled her hands from where it was covering her mouth just to speak. “Madame Kiko would have hurt you, I know it.”

Wesk looks down at her, and his anger is palpable. “What were you thinking talking to her like that, Jen?”

“No, what were you thinking trying to join the Family?!” Jen shouts, tears running down her cheeks as she hits her brother with tiny fists. Her brother doesn’t even flinch, doesn’t even loosen his grip, and Beck sees the terror in both of their grips on each other. He looks away.

“I had to take the opportunity,” Wesk tells her, quiet. “You know I have to - they’re going to leave any day.”

“Boss Owa’s a coward,” she sniffs.

“Don’t say that!”

“It’s true! He’s not gunna go to the Grand Line ‘cus he’s a coward!”

“Don’t—” Wesk looks around as they walk briskly up to The Razor. People are running around, away or towards the fight, but Beck doesn’t really hear anymore sounds of the fight. Luffy ended it quick then. Wesk notices where they are and looks at Beck, “Why are you helping us?”

“Captain’s orders.”

Wesk tenses. “You’re… sailors?”

There’s an implicit question there that Beck doesn’t confirm. He beckons up to the gangplank he’d thrown down hazardously earlier while Luffy was jumping off. Wesk stares suspiciously, but a loud chorusing cheer from a crowd of pirates has him looking around skittishly.

“You better not kidnap us.”

Beck doesn’t think that’s what’s happening. When the siblings duck into the cabin, Beck heads to the bow from where Shanks was overlooking them earlier. There’s a pile of unconscious bodies on the street, and he watches from his vantage as another group wearing the same gaudy clothing as the gang run around the corner. He sees the moment Luffy and Shanks spot them, and he’s sure they’re smiling at each other.

“Hey!” Luffy calls out. “Are these guys your friends? They’re a bunch of weaklings.”

Shanks slips away into the new crowd as Luffy runs in the other direction, his laughter echoing across the street and leading the approaching thugs away. Pirates have replaced the locals standing around the commotion, and they heckle the gang members running past for losing to a kid. That distracts some of them and Beck winces as he sees the path of the immediate future—they’re going to get into a fight. With such a display of weakness as well, the pirates won’t be so cautious of the influence of the gang anymore, and they’re sure to act out. The prophecy of the town perhaps not surviving the night might come true after all.

He catches Shanks coming up the gangplank. “Any reason you helped them?”

Shanks flashes him a smile. “Why does anyone help anyone?”

“The goodness of your heart, then? You’re a pirate.”

He laughs. “Well, Luffy stepped in first. I’m just… grabbing an opportunity.”

Beck gives him a questioning look. Shanks pauses in front of the door to the galley to look back at him.

“You said we needed crewmembers.”

When they walk in, the two siblings aren’t facing each other, but they’re still nearly pressed together. Wesk looks up at them.

“Where’s the captain?”

“That’ll be me,” Shanks says, and he pulls out a chair on the dining table to sit across from them. “I’m Shanks.”

“You?” Wesk raises a brow. “You’re a kid.”

“And yet I’ve been a pirate for a long time already,” Shanks says with an easy grin.

Wesk tenses again, sending a look at Beck that might have been betrayal. Beck shrugs, because there was no explicit question, so he’s not at fault for not answering anyway. Wesk crosses his arms and asks, “What do you want?”

“Can’t I be a good samaritan?” 

“As a pirate?” Wesk echoes Beck’s earlier sentiment incredulously.

Shanks puts his chin in his hands. His smile is easy, disarming, and from here Beck can see how he got charmed even when Shanks was hungover and vomiting in a bucket in a cell. He says, “Don’t worry about it. Your speech moved me, you know?”

Beck hadn’t heard most of the speech, if any. Wesk looks slightly embarrassed, tanned cheeks blushing, but he keeps his mouth a thin line of steel. “You heard that?” he asks, and Beck knows he’s trying to keep cool, but he’s not doing a good job.

“There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Having the guts to shout out your dream like that is pretty impressive. Luffy was impressed, too, you know. He helped you first, so I followed his lead.”

“That’s the boy that attacked Madame Kiko?”

Shanks tilts her head. “That’s her name?”

Wesk clears his throat. “Look, he shouldn’t have done that. The Owa Family basically owns most of the coastal towns, and even some of the villages in-land too. Everyone here pays protection fees to them - but seas know there’s nothing to be protected from. And now that you pissed them off, they’ll come for my family. You guys can just leave, but now they’ll come for us.”

Shanks shrugs. “That’s a shame.”

Wesk looks angry. “Don’t you understand? You shouldn’t have butted in!”

“Shut up!” the little girl says, shoving her brother lightly. Wesk looks surprised at the outburst, like he forgot she was there. “Big brother is being stubborn again! They helped you - they saved you and you have to say thank you. I’m going to say thank you.” She’s valiantly holding back tears as she stands up abruptly. “Thank you for saving my stupid big brother.”

She tries to bow, but she’s short enough that she almost bangs her head immediately against the table—if not for her brother catching her forehead on instinct before it hits the wood. Beck appreciates the show of reflexes, trading a glance with Shanks.

“Jen, you don’t have to—”

“Thank you!” Jen shouts again very pointedly over her brother. Wesk sighs.

“Thank you for the help,” he says, standing up as well. “But I have to go and prepare to get my house burned down.”

“Do you want to join my crew?”

Wesk stares at Shanks blankly. It’s a few seconds before a series of emotions cross his face.

“What?” he asks softly, as if he doesn’t mean to. Jen looks up at him, alarmed.

“Join my crew,” Shanks says, “I like your dream.”

Wesk continues to stare. “You’re making fun of me.”

“Not really. If anything, I would make fun of that gang boss trying to become pirate king. It’ll be twenty years before anyone finds the One Piece.”

“No!” Jen cries out, grabbing Wesk’s trousers. “You can’t leave.”

Wesk looks down at her. Something complicated plays over his expressions again. He says, “I have to protect my family, now that we…” he closes his eyes, and Beck knows defeat when he sees it. “I angered the Owa Family. I can’t leave.”

Shanks smiles as if nothing is wrong. “Alright. I’ll see you later then.”

The easy acceptance throws everyone else in the room off. Beck doesn’t say anything.

Wesk blinks. “A-alright. Let’s go, Jen.”

As Wesk pulls her sister with him, they hear the slapping sound of sandals coming up the gangplank. Beck sends Shanks a look, and Shanks just grins innocently at him. Beck huffs, amused.

Luffy bursts through the door, and his attention zones in on Wesk, who has frozen at the sudden intrusion.

“Oh, hey. You’re the guy from earlier.”

Wesk opens his mouth but Luffy bulldozes on.

“That was pretty cool of you. Some people are too scared to chase their dreams and it sometimes takes me a long time to make them do it. Shishishi, it took sooo looong  for me to make Sanji sail with me to find the All Blue, but he was just being stupid about it because the old man saved his life and he didn’t want to leave. Which was dumb, ‘cause the old man didn’t save him for that reason anyway.”

It’s nice to see someone else get bowled over by the force of nature that is this boy speaking a mile a minute, not caring about holding a conversation in the slightest.

“You wanted to find that - uh - unagi?”

“Kusanagi,” Wesk corrects as if on autopilot, still stunned by the sudden onslaught of Luffy. “The sword.”

“Does that mean you’re a swordsman? That’s cool! Though not as cool as Zoro ‘cause he uses three swords and also he’s my first mate. I bet you’re not as strong as him. But even though you’re not Zoro, swordsmen are still pretty cool.”

“ I’m a swordsman too,” Shanks mutters petulantly under his breath.

“Though ninjas are still cooler. Hey, hey, is that dragon you’re talking about real? I once ate a dragon on danger island, but it turns out it wasn’t a real dragon and Apple Gramps made it. Zoro told me he had a sword that used to belong to a guy who killed a dragon though, and he fought that guy’s corpse on the ghost island. Is it the same sword?”

Wesk blinks. He’s not the only one doing a double take at the sequence of words that just came out of Luffy’s mouth. “The - the Kusanagi is a Supreme Grade Sword that was said to have been forged by the blood of Ichoro, the eight headed serpent, centuries ago when the storm god slayed it.”

Luffy makes a face, closing his eyes.

After a moment, Wesk asks, “Are you—”

“Ichoro, Ichoro, eight headed snake…” Luffy repeats, frowning intensely as he thinks about something. It’s the same face he made when Beck was trying to wrestle the location of Syrup Village from him. “It sounds familiar.”

“It’s an Oykot legend,” Wesk explains. There’s an energy to his voice when he talks about it that hasn’t been present since Jen first ran to him on the street. “Long ago, far away on a land deep in the Grand Line, an eight-headed Sea King started terrorising the people of this island—but the storm god Susano’o came down from the heavens and slayed the serpent, cutting off each head and tail, scattering parts of its body across the world so that its eight head landed here in the East Blue—and that’s how Oykot came to be.”

“Awesome!” Luffy exclaims, stars in his eyes, and his enthusiastic response to the story seems to throw Wesk off. “Where’s the sword, then?”

Wesk continues, urged on by Luffy’s excitement, “The legends that have been passed down in Oykot say that the Kusanagi is hidden in one of the scattered parts of Ichoro. That’s why I want to go to the Grand Line. It’s my dream to find Kusanagi.”

“So that’s why you were asking that lady to join their crew?” Luffy tilts his head.

Wesk looks away. “I - yeah. I was.”

Luffy makes a considering noise. He does that a lot - throws his voice up and down and around, like it’s fun to make noises just because. He says, laughing, “That lady was kinda lame though. If those guys are the crew, they’re not even gonna survive Paradise.”

“Look, it was—” Wesk stops and looks at his sister. She is still holding onto his hand tightly, as if he would disappear if she did not keep an eye on him. “It doesn’t matter now. I can’t go.”

“Can’t go?” Luffy asks, confused.

“I can’t set sail now,” Wesk says through gritted teeth, and it looks like it pains him to repeat it. “That dream’s already over. You pissed off the Owa Family when you interfered. They’re not going to let that slide and they’ll go after my family next. I have to go.”

“Are they interfering with your dream?” Luffy asks.

“What?” Wesk asks, taken aback.

“The Owie people,” Luffy says. “If we beat them, will you be able to reach for your dream?”

Beck catches the implication in Luffy’s words and immediately looks to Shanks to see what he’s doing about it, but Shanks is just looking at Luffy with an unreadable gaze, smile hidden behind his fist as he leans his chin on it.

“What,” Wesk repeats, this time as much more of an exclamation than a question. “You can’t just - no! There’s over a hundred a’ them!”

“Only,” Shanks says under his breath.-

“Even if they’re all beaten up, they’ll come back for my family,” Wesk says, visibly distressed. “They’re not pirates. These people live here. They can’t just run!”

Shanks finally butts into the conversation, “Not if they get arrested.”

Wesk scoffs. “By who, the Marines? They left the Family alone for years. They’re corrupt as all hell.”

“We’re not talking about local Marines,” Shanks says.

Beck blurts out, “No.”

Wesk glances at him, confused. “What?”

Shanks stands up smoothly and comes to stand beside Luffy, who’s picking his nose as he watches Shanks. “If you want, Wesk,” he says, “the entirety of this gang will be locked away by daybreak tomorrow.”

Jen speaks up, “You can stop those guys?”

Wesk looks down at her, “Jen—”

“Please,” she says, and there’s hope in her eyes. “The Owa Family have done nothing but take from us. If you can get rid of them, I’ll do anything.”

“Jen!”

“I don’t want anything from you,” Shanks says, grinning. Jen furrows her brow in confusion, but Wesk knows exactly what he means.

“You can definitely do it?” Wesk asks sceptically.

“I don’t know, Luffy,” Shanks looks over to him. “Can your grandfather arrest a hundred East Blue thugs?”

Luffy throws his head back and laughs. “It’ll be like a warm up, yeah!” 

Wesk looks at Jen’s hopeful eyes. The moment of decision plays out across his face, and Beck knows how the combined confidence of these two’s absolute certainty in their own words can sway a person.

 He says, “I’ll join your crew.”

-

Wesk’s first task as crewmember is to help Beck stock up for their journey to Syrup Village.

Well - it wasn’t that easy at first. His sister’s face had immediately fallen and she started shouting at Shanks for tricking her and trying to steal her brother away, to which Shanks just teased her childishly, which made her even more mad, yelling about nasty pirates. The family drama playing out in front of them as Wesk tries to convince his sister it’s fine and Jen stubbornly yells that he can’t leave her made Beck feel incredibly awkward, and he knows even Shanks had been shifting on his feet the longer it went on.

It ended with Luffy crouching down in front of her and asking what her dream was.

“I want my brother to never leave me,” she’d said, to which Luffy had just frowned and said that was lame; she couldn’t want that forever.

She’d said she wanted to go study in the capital, and be the first one in their family to do so.

Luffy had asked her what she would do if she had one chance to go study in the capital, but someone made her miss it. He asked her if she would hate that person. If she would regret it for the rest of her life.

Needless to say, she started bawling again.

So, after dropping Jen off with her (very lovely) mother, Wesk’s first task as crewmember is to help Beck get the supplies they need. Shanks is off spreading rumours that the man that beat the Owa Family is planning to attack the Owa Family’s base on Odiakkoh directly with his crew of over two dozen pirates, all of them as strong as him. That leaves Luffy alone on the boat, which is Beck’s preferred location for him so he won’t start trouble in town.

(They’re carting back their shopping and Beck inquires towards the face Wesk has been making since they dropped Jen off. Wesk asks, “Did you flirt with my mother earlier?”

Beck denies this. She was single anyway, he doesn’t say.)

They make sure Luffy is seen at the harbour, make sure the people watching know which ship he’s getting on, and they make sure everyone sees, as they set off at dusk, that The Razor is heading straight for Odiakkoh. Meanwhile, Wesk continues to keep up his unimpressed air at the state of their tiny crew and ship, but he can’t hide his excitement from anyone on the ship at actually getting to set sail. Beck wonders if Iruka was like that as well and finds he can’t really remember the day they set out to sea that well. Wesk apparently worked his father’s old fishing boat in his childhood as his only sailing experience before he had to work Oykot’s factories, and Beck sees his and Iruka’s experience in that as well—having to work in one of the many North Blue factories, their only memory of the cold seas from their childhood spent swimming out to freezing deep waters. Wesk knows how to work the helm and sails, at the very least.

It’s fully dark by the time they sail through the channel between Odiakkoh and the mainland, and Wesk leads them to a cove on the smaller island where they anchor. Beck doesn’t question the plan’s reliance on Luffy and Shanks… sensing the Marines arriving at Oykot. He’s learned by now to just trust their abilities. Worrying will just turn him grey.

But he’s still sitting in the crow’s nest on lookout for any of the Owa Family members that might discover them—after all, they’ve probably pulled back all their forces to ready for Shanks’ promised attack and would be all over Odiakkoh lying in wait for them. Not that they’re going to see much of those promised pirates.

It’s Beck’s position that allows him to hear Shanks ask Luffy on the deck below, “How’d you know how to get the little girl to let Wesk go?”

Luffy hums. There’s a small sea breeze that rocks The Razor minutely. For a moment, Beck thinks Luffy isn’t going to answer, but he says, “I was her, I think.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sabo had to leave first, or he would regret it. And even if I was sad that he had to go, even if I didn’t see him for a long time, he was free. I’m never going to regret that, even if it hurts.”

Shanks huffs. “You mean letting someone go because you love them, right?”

“Yeah! I know Ace and Sabo and Dad would have stayed if I asked them to.” Luffy always talks about people as if others are also expected to know them. “But I’m not going to do that. They have their own dreams and adventures and if I made them stay there would just be a lot of regrets and no one would be happy.”

Beck glances at the quarterdeck where Wesk is leaning against the railings to look over the cove’s entrance for any incoming ships. Beck knows Wesk is also listening to this conversation from the sombre look on his face. Unlike Wesk, Beck himself left nothing behind in the North Blue, no home or family he really wants to go back to—but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t understand having to leave something behind.

“What?” Shanks says, and Beck thinks Luffy must be looking at him with that strange gaze of his again.

“Shanks has someone like that? That you gotta let go?”

Beck wonders about his last crew. What happened that made Shanks look at the horizon like that.

There’s a prolonged silence. Shanks says, “I think I already did.”

That doesn’t seem to be the end of the conversation, but something shifts in the air and Beck stands up straight, looking out over the rocks and trees in the cove. It’s dark, the night sky covered in clouds. He catches Shanks saying something to Luffy below.

“You feel that?”

“Yeah.”

Beck’s own haki is still relatively untrained, but his eyes are not. He aims. “Chief,” he calls out.

“Yeah,” Shanks says. “Go ahead.”

The sound of his own gunshot rings out, echoing across the cove. A moment later, shouts go up further in the darkness of the land.

“Did they find us?” Wesk asks, and as he does, a harpoon shoots through the air silently and spears through the mast. Beck stumbles, feeling the mast jolt all the way from the crow’s nest.

“Cut the rope!” he calls out, aiming towards land again as more hooks are thrown for the railings. “Don’t take that harpoon out!”

Shanks is thankfully quick with a sword, slicing through rope and deflecting hooks and leaving the gang no chance to board from where they’re trying to swing down from a higher cliff.

“Luffy, can you look out for your grandfather’s haki?”

“I don’t feel him yet,” Luffy says absently, barely paying attention to the battle as he stares at something in the distance.

Then, bullets start firing in the direction of their ship and Beck curses, ducking back into the crow’s nest.

“That’s annoying,” he hears Luffy say over the gunshots. Beck rises up to shoot returning fire into the direction of the shots, then ducks back down. At least he got his rifle from where he left it on the ship before he got captured at Loguetown.

“Luffy, get down!” Wesk yells out.

“Hey Shanks, can you just cut that?”

Shanks shouts, “What?!”

“That.”

“Oh - I guess? Probably.”

Luffy huffs. “I wish Zoro was here. He would just do it.”

“Wha - hey! I can so cut that.”

“Oh yeah? I bet Zoro can cut it better than you.”

“You—” Shanks lets out a frustrated noise.

Beck twists to stand and aim his rifle, only to stop short as he sees - well. The best way to describe it would be a slash, but he doesn’t actually see anything.

He thinks Shanks swung his sword. The cliff face is cut in half, and it’s sliding forward. There are screams and splashes as people jump and fall away from that moving mass of rock.

“Shit!” Wesk curses. “Move the ship!”

Beck leaps out of the crow’s nest and slides down the rigging, grabbing hold of a rope as he goes down and pulling the sails free with it. Luffy jumps for the anchor and yanks it up with one bare hand, inhuman strength sending it up in one pull.

“Wesk!” Shanks calls out, and Wesk, who is already on the quarterdeck, leaps for the helm, spinning the wheel around. The ship lurches away from its relative proximity to the falling cliff and the boulders rolling on the shallow rocks towards them.

“He’s here,” Luffy says.

“Shit, okay,” Shanks has his hand on his hat, the other holding onto the railings as the ship moves. “Is he heading this way?”

Luffy squints. “He can’t feel us yet.”

Shanks pauses, looking in the same direction as Luffy. After a moment, his brows furrow. Then, his eyes widen and he exclaims, “How big is your range?!”

Strange children with strangely strong haki, Beck thinks. Though he guesses it’s expected with Shanks growing up a New World pirate and Luffy being raised and trained by that.  

“How long until he’s in-range?” Beck asks just as a bullet flies wide of the ship and into the ocean. Another shot follows and Beck moves to hide behind the mast. Shanks and Luffy are unphased. “We’re sitting ducks here.” The cove was great for hiding from the wide eyes of the coastal lookouts, but once inside, it can very well be a death trap if their enemies wait on the beach on either side of the cove’s opening, and they have to hurry before the Owa Family even thinks of doing it.

“A while, prolly,” Luffy says, unconcerned that their plan can fall apart.

“We have to catch your old man’s attention another way then,” Wesk shouts from the helm. “This ship’s got cannons, right?”

Luffy looks to the south-west again—the direction that any ship would sail in from Loguetown. His face is expressionless. He says, “Okay.”

Beck’s ears pop.

He’s not sure what happens for a moment. Something crackles, like lightning, but he thinks he imagines it, and suddenly the ship is illuminated by moonlight. Beck looks up and sees the clouds have scattered, the night sky bright with stars.

Beck doesn’t feel it so much as feel its absence. The night goes quiet and still, the gunshots stop, and the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He smells ozone, feels the barometric pressure drop; there’s not a cloud in the sky anymore that heralds a storm. It’s night and yet he feels the glare of the sun across his skin, warmer than it should have any right to be at this hour, and he’s sweating, but it might be more from the sudden feeling that he’s just dodged something cataclysmic than the heat that comes out of nowhere. Beck’s reminded of a feeling years ago when his crew departed an island a day before news of a natural disaster struck. It’s the feeling of being spared from nature’s wrath not because it cares about you, but because you just happened to not be in its indiscriminate path of destruction.

Beck’s never felt Conqueror’s Haki before, and he has a feeling that he still hasn’t.

“What the shit,” Wesk whispers, and yet his voice carries despite there being no wind.

Shanks lets out a breath like a gasp, and he stares at Luffy with a look of awe, a look like vindication, like something he’d suspected has just been confirmed.

Beck is not really surprised that Luffy has Conqueror’s either. He should be; the odds of two on the same ship—two at this age on a ship, no less—are incremental. Yet, he’s not surprised. It makes sense for someone like him who expects the world to bend to his will to actually be able to do that—bend the world to his will. Beck thinks about his declaration to be the next King of the Pirates and - it never felt concrete, never like something anyone can do. It’s myth and dreams and impossibility, the bravado of any run-of-the-mill pirate even before Roger’s crown was up for grabs; Beck admits he dismissed it out of hand that first day they met. And yet.

“Got his attention,” Luffy says with a grin, his hand coming up to his hair like he’s holding it down. He laughs, a shishishishi sound. “Yosh! Let’s go to Lizard Island!”

Their plan goes smoothly after that as Luffy narrates Garp the Fist landing on the other side of Odiakkoh, the south-west coast on the path up from Polestar Island. Only when the Marines land and the Owa Family confront them do they actually break away from sailing along the coast and into the channel proper, heading back north to Akaso, which they’ll sail around to get a bearing for the Gecko Islands

“Garp’s not gonna pass by that many people calling themselves new pirates,” Shanks says. 

“Is anyone gonna tell me what that was - wait did you say Garp?” Wesk asks.

A pause. “ Dehahahaha! Which Vice-Admiral did you think we were luring here?”

They’ve lit up the lanterns on the ship now since they no longer had to hide, and Beck can see all their faces clearer—and he sees Wesk gape like a fish. “Wh - I don’t know! Just some guy!”

“Remind me to tell you more about Haki,” Beck says in response to Wesk’s first question. They’d already given him a short summary of Observation to get him on the plan and how they’ll lure the Marines to Odiakkoh, but nothing more than that.

Wesk mutters, “Grand Line… magicks. ”

“Hey, Wes,” Luffy calls out from where he’s climbing the figurehead. “I think that whiny little girl came to say goodbye.”

Wesk stares for a moment. Then, “My sister?!”

Wesk panics, looking down at the helm, then at Beck. “Hey, Vice-Captain, take the wheel - I gotta—” his hands hover over it, not wanting to leave, but wanting to go. Beck joins him at the quarterdeck and Wesk starts running before Beck even gets there. Beck takes the helm.

“Jen!” Wesk calls, hanging over the railings. “What the fu - hell are you doing out here?”

Beck sees it now—a small fishing boat with a single lantern lighting it up on the dark waters. The little girl is leaning out of the boat, held onto by the back of her shirt by her mother, whom Beck met earlier.

“Mom said you won’t say goodbye!” she shouts across the water as The Razor nears the boat. They're a mile from shore, and the fishing boat seems to have been waiting, moving  to intercept them once they were in sight. “So I came to say goodbye!”

“I—” Beck sees Wesk blink away what might be tears. “I’m not gonna say goodbye! I’ll come back, right?”

Beck steers the ship past the little boat, but not close enough that the two siblings could touch, even if they’re reaching for the other. Beck notices Luffy staring at them with an unreadable expression.

Wesk’s mother shouts out, “Catch!”

Wesk stumbles back to catch something she threw, and Beck quietly appreciates the show of strength from the stout woman. Wesk raises the object towards his family. It’s a sword. “Thank you!”

Jen screams, “SEE YOU LATER!”

Wesk takes a shaky breath. “Yeah! I’ll see you later!”

Shanks puts his arm around Wesk’s shoulder, pulling him along. Wesk, taller than Shanks, stumbles slightly as he’s moved around. “Welcome to the crew, then!” he says, and then, as if his last experience with alcohol didn’t end in a holding cell, he adds, “Shall we have a drink?”

Beck remembers what Luffy said to them that night in the cells. “Welcome to the Red Hair Pirates.”

“Wh - not you too!” Shanks lets go of Wesk, whirling around to look up at Beck at the helm.

Luffy laughs from across the ship.

“We are not calling ourselves the Red Hair Pirates. Can you imagine them calling me Red Hair as an epithet? No way.”

Luffy laughs harder, slipping from the figurehead and onto the deck.

Wesk asks over the sound of Luffy’s laughter, “Do I have to dye my hair?” 

They depart from Oykot under the dark of night, leaving what is quickly turning into a contained battlefield far behind them. Their ship bears signs of battle, bullet holes in the hull, railings crumbling, the harpoon still sticking through the mast. And yet, there’s not a single hole in the sails. The Razor Hammer holds.

-

It’s days later when land is on the horizon that things start to get… weird.