Chapter Text
You woke up, ate a quick breakfast, exchanged your pajamas for a pair of black jeans and a light blue shirt, brushed your teeth, grabbed your bag, and got out of your appartment.
The autumn sky was clouded, reflecting your mood as a car ran a red light before you could even think of crossing the street. Probably someone worried about being late for something.
You arrived at your job, clocked in, did your hours, then came back to your appartment with no other plan than preparing a meal and getting enough sleep to get through the next day.
Was your life dull ?
Yes, absolutely.
But it was not like you had many options to change it. Your parents had suggested meeting new people, but the last time you had tried to get back into the dating game… well, you were reminded that every man on this planet was awfully lame compared to the anime characters you were a fan of.
After feeding yourself and giving your two plants their bi-weekly watering, you showered, put on your pajamas, grabbed your phone and went to bed with the intention to find a nice fanfiction to read before you slept.
As you started checking the most recent ones published on your favourite fandom, you felt a weird headache settle in your skull, but you ignored it and clicked on a promising title.
Still, you were feeling tired.
So tired.
-o-oOo-o-
You woke up again, but this time, something felt off.
The last thing you could remember was collapsing on your pillow while reading yet another One Piece fix-it fanfiction. Maybe you were still dreaming ? That would explain why you could hear the sound of waves and feel the salty breeze of the ocean on your skin.
You opened your eyes with a groan, and immediately froze. Either you were in a very, very vivid dream, or something was seriously wrong.
You were laying on a huge flat rock at the end of a pier, with what looked like a massive but abandoned lighthouse right in front of you and a lot of threatening grey clouds in the sky. You pushed on your hands to sit and look around you, and were faced with the blue immensity of the sea, along with impressive cliffs on either side of where the pier joined the land.
Your first reaction, absurdly, was to wonder who had been stupid or crazy enough to build a lighthouse in a place that could only lead ships to wreck against the cliffs. Surely that was against regulations, no one in their right mind would have ever granted a permit for that.
A wave crashed on a lower rock, splashing some water on you, and that was when you finally noticed that what you were wearing was most definitely not your comfy pajamas, or anything that you owned, for that matter.
It was a long blue skirt, splitting at mid-tigh level on either side of your legs to leave one long band of cloth at the front and revealing the pretty but clearly sturdy sparta-like sandals laced on your feet. The skirt stopped a little low on your hips, revealing more skin than you were used to since the top you were wearing appeared to be some sort of cropped tank top with a V neckline. The only thing that was still yours was your necklace, a small blue medallion with a silver celtic triskel on it, hanging on a silver chain.
"What on earth…" you started muttering, but then the wind picked up and your hair flew in your face, making you grumble about it until you actually looked at the locks in your hands, and then you frantically brought as much as you could in front of your eyes.
It was blue. And wavy. And long.
Holy mother of plot twists, what was going on !?
"Okay, breathe, breathe, it's fine," you told yourself, trying not to hyperventilate. You were in a place you did not know, wearing clothes that were not yours, and your hair had changed to become blue and long and wavy. You pinched yourself and immediately winced.
Not dreaming.
You stood up on the rock and looked around you again. As far as you could tell, the place was pretty much deserted.
"Well at least it's not raining," you huffed with a little smile.
A drop of water chose this precise moment to fall from the sky and land on your forehead.
-o-oOo-o-
The old lighthouse was unlocked, and you got inside without trouble. At least it would provide some sort of shelter from the storm starting to rage outside. Hopefully, it might also contain some information about where you were.
The first floor had clearly seen one too many floods, there was nothing to salvage that you could see, everything was covered in moss or on its way to be, with dirt everywhere and broken pieces of furniture on the ground.
You walked up the stairs and took a quick look at the various floors, telling yourself you would do a more thorough tour of the place later. For now, water, food, and ideally something you could sleep on were your main priorities.
Then you arrived at the last floor, and your jaw dropped. The entirety of the walls was made of windows, giving you an all-around view of the currently angry sea and the cliffs behind you. Only four pillars, each marked with a cardinal point, were supporting the structure and interrupting the window circle.
The view was breathtaking, and you got closer to a window, wondering what kind of miracle technique the crafter had used that had the glass still holding on to this day without so much as a crack.
Despite the lack of light and the increasingly darkening sky outside, you could still make out the presence of a bed, a desk, a couch, and other smaller pieces of furniture.
Lightning stroke the sea suddenly, soon followed by the deafening sound of thunder, but the split-second had been enough to make you notice the papers haphazardly thrown on the desk, and you walked closer to take a look.
What you found there, while covered in dust, was a bunch of what looked like… bounty posters ?
Another bout of lightning tore the sky, illuminating the documents just long enough for you to read the first one and identify the man in the picture.
Wanted – Akagami no Shanks
"You're kidding me," you whispered, feeling faint and clutching the desk to keep you from faltering. "I'm in One Piece ?"
-o-oOo-o-
One month later, you came back to the lighthouse using the hidden path along the cliff, a basket full of groceries on your left arm. It was low tide, so you had no problem using the pier to walk to the lighthouse that was now your home.
After the initial shock of having been transferred, reincarnated, somethinged into what you had so far believed to only be a fictional universe, you had quickly found your marks.
As you put the groceries away, you smiled at your now cleaner, comfier lighthouse. When the people had first seen you arrive in their little town, they had been surprised and more than a little apprehensive.
But as your grandmother always said, manners will get you everywhere. After introducing yourself politely and bowing to the mayor with respect, the townspeople seemed to realise you were not a threat to their community and became much friendlier. That was how you learned that you were in the New World, and this island in particular was situated in the Red-Haired Pirates' territory.
It seemed the previous town leader had been the one to build the lighthouse. The man had been using it to lure ships in order to steal their riches and sell whoever survived as slaves. It had worked for almost two decades, until the day Akagami and his crew arrived, around four years ago. The villagers told you how they killed the man, freed the slaves – some of which were still living here – and put the island under the Emperor's protection.
You could not say you were surprised by that information, it definitely sounded like something the red-haired man you knew from the show would do.
The townspeople had assumed you had survived a shipwreck, and you did nothing to correct that assumption. They very kindly offered you a place to stay in the village, but you declined and stated that you would be perfectly happy staying in the lighthouse, no matter how far away it was from town.
You finished putting away your groceries, and walked back down the stairs to get to the ground floor – now bare of anything, but clean – and then through the door, that one of the villagers had helped you repair so it would actually lock.
The reason you opted to stay away from the village, aside from purely prefering to live by yourself, was because it was the safest way for you to practice without anyone realising what you could do.
You jumped from one rock to another, until you were almost at sea level.
"Okay," you breathed, and raised your arms in front of you. "Feel the water," you murmured to yourself, and started making slow movements.
At your command, the water started following your directions, rolling against the current, taking various shapes and floating above the sea in small ribbons. At the flick of your wrist, you even managed to create a perfectly round bubble levitating in front of you.
You did not have the slighest idea how you had obtained the ability to manipulate water – not ice, snow, or steam, you had tried and failed miserably – but you knew how invaluable such a skill was in a world like One Piece.
You also knew that if the World Government caught wind of it, you would be locked in Impel Down or in a laboratory for the rest of your life faster than you could say Cipher Pol.
Ergo, past the initial shock of the discovery – you were never telling anyone how exactly you had found out about that talent, nope, never – you had decided to train and experiment with it. This unplanned skill had the added bonus of allowing you to dive safely to explore the numerous sunken ships in the area and bring back everything of value.
You could then go in town and exchange them for money, food, or even clothes, since you prefered having more than just one outfit you would have to wash all the time. Although you had become very fond of your surprisingly comfortable slitted skirt, crop top, and sandals. It was a combination that let you free to move easily and – against all logic – was particularly practical when you went diving.
The first time you had showed up in town with a small chest full of jewellery and explained where you had found it, however, the villagers – especially Dei, the innkeeper – had warned you and told you to be very careful, as the cliffs were dangerous to swim close to. You had smiled and promised to be cautious, which seemed to be enough for them.
All in all, you had no more complaints about your life.