Chapter Text
People who had never experienced starvation could never understand how Luffy felt all the time, 24 hours a day seven days a week. He lived in constant starvation. Not necessarily for food. He hungered for everything. That was just what Famine did.
Luffy fed off of people's desires for whatever they most wanted. Around Valentines it was love and sex. Some of those were pretty funny to be witness too. Around Christmas it was for material objects; toys, jewelry, anything people could get there hands on. December was the one time in the year that Luffy could actually feel like what he was eating was actually staying with him. In American at Thanksgiving it was people's need to gorge themselves on food. One of Luffy's favorite times of the year. The one thing he loved to feed off of people most was the hunger to eat.
Luffy classified himself as being slightly different from his brothers. For one was his looks. He was the only one out of the four of them that decided on an outfit that was, Well, the term Death had used was ragged. His clothes, what little he had, were tattered and worn through. Holes everywhere and loose threads hung from the seams. The only thing that wasn't like that that he wore was his hat. It was gifted to him at his creation and, even though he did eat his horse within the first decade of his existence, he was determined to keep the hat safe.
Another was that his appearance, physically anyway. It was determined by how well he ate. Pestilences’ nose never got longer the more he spread his plagues, nor did War get bloodier, or Death become less than just bones. It was just Luffy, Famine, that when he ate a good meal, like at Christmas, he gained weight. His frame filled out and he looked healthy. It was usually between May and September, like now, when Luffy would look like he was just skin on bones. Not many people hungered for things at that time. Ok, that's wrong. Many people did, just not as many between October and April.
The third thing that made him different was that he didn't always just pray on the entire population of planet Earth. Sure he did that, like in December, but he mostly went to a specific handful that met most of his needs. Those one percenters that other people always complain about. Part of the reason War got such a great civil war in America those four years ago was because of Famine and his one percenters.
However, the current person Luffy had started to follow was not one of those people. There was certainly a chance that Luffy could turn her into one. She had an insatiable hunger for money and material goods, mostly clothing and cartography supplies. Which really didn't make sense to Luffy since she only ever wore, what she called, ‘power suits’ when she was at work.
That was where he met up with her, in her executive office up in some fancy building in the middle of Auckland. He watched her help bring all kinds of money into the company doing whatever it was she did. Actually he wasn't even sure if she was bringing in the money or just counting it. It was all just a bunch of numbers to him. He fed off her ability to do whatever it was her job was, but also when she took her breaks to look up new interesting clothing options.
It was during one of those breaks that Luffy realized he could follow her around outside of work where some of her other greed options would become available to him. Sure he got plenty off of her at her work on her computer with the numbers and online catalogues. But it was the thought that he could manipulate her wants into action out on the streets that got him following her one afternoon.
Luffy watched her long red hair as it flowed down her back and moved with her steps and the slight breeze. Why does she need the scarf if she has that hair? Luffy wondered as they made their way into a small boutique that sold ladies underwear.
He ended up getting bored as he watched her look through bras and panties. Nothing she was looking through tipped his scales.
Famine was the only horseman that actually needed a stupid object to know when someone hungered for something. It's stupid, Luffy thought as he saw the right side of the scale had finally started to move down as she held up a dark blue negligee. He watched closely as the right side started to go back up, meaning she wanted it but not desperately.
Just like what he had done before, with the online things, Luffy tipped the scale. He placed his finger firmly on the right side and pushed down. The woman then simply found the appropriate size, paid, and left. It added a bit of sustenance to Luffy's basket. He knew that it wasn't going to last long. Nothing lasts long in a basket with no bottom, he thought as he followed the woman to her apartment.
Luffy had been very stupid and very naive when he had first been figuring out his abilities all those millennia ago. He had eaten his horse. A stupid idea and one that he has forever regretted, because that horse was cool. All black and sleek and too thin to fill anyone up. As far as Luffy knew War was the only one with a horse still around. Although he could have sworn he saw it wandering around without its master sometime last year. Not like it was Luffy's business, but if he did find it wandering without War he was going to eat it. Thin as his horse may have been it kept him fed far longer than anything else he had ever partaken in.
Upon entering the young woman's house the right scale fell completely down at the smell of cooked food in the air. Food, Luffy thought as he threw himself into the kitchen to see what was being made. Another young woman stood in the kitchen, long blue hair tied up into a ponytail at the crown of her head, who lightly stirred a sauce in one pot with an eye on the pasta that was in the other.
No meat. Luffy dramatically sank to the floor in the kitchen, half passed through the floor, and moaned at the depravity of it. They don't even have a slight hunger for meat, he whined more as the red head walked into the room after she had changed. She lightly kissed her, apparent, girlfriend on the shoulder before she gathered dishes and set the table off to the side.
Luffy got a small fill during the dinner and even got more after. They had sex, well they called it dessert. They even used the new negligee.
Sex wasn't one of those things Luffy had ever been interested in. Pestilence liked it, well when he gave people diseases from it, and War found it to resemble another form of battle. But Luffy just didn't care. Sure it fed him rather well, especially these women. They don't have an off switch. But it just didn't seem like a necessary thing.
After several rounds Luffy watched as the two women finally drifted off to sleep. With a full belly Luffy did the same, sort of. Horsemen didn't need to sleep like humans did, just as they didn't need to have sex like Nami and Vivi, Luffy learned their names as they moaned them to each other, did. Horsemen more just emptied their mind while they attached themselves to someone that they felt like following. Luffy did that to Nami, so that he would be with her for a time and influence her whenever the scales started to lean. The thing about the Horsemens' ‘sleep’ was that they controlled when they attached to someone, and when they let their minds drift, but as soon as the attached person started to have any feelings that were similar to what the Horseman craved they were woken up. This meant Luffy's brothers could float on people for long periods of time before the person got sick, wanted to fight, or felt like dying. Luffy on the other hand never got to float for long.
He got ‘woken up’ the next morning by more of a need to stick fingers in places, followed by the need to bath, then the need to eat, before finally Nami ran off to work.
Work was more of the same. Lots of number, a new dress and shoes, more numbers, a present for Vivi, and more numbers. Luffy hated it at the same time loved it for feeding him.
It was after work that got interesting. Nami had a phone call with Vivi about someone named Chopper and ‘meeting at his place for dinner.’ Luffy loved dinner. He just wasn't expecting the company.
There was Nami, who he followed, Viv, the person named Chopper, and Pestilence.