When Gildarts Clive opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed was the sky. Wide and blue, with cotton-puff clouds drifting slowly above him. The air smelled of salt and grass.
The second thing he noticed was the ground beneath him—a bizarrely long stretch of land, as if someone had taken a normal island and stretched it like taffy. Hills rolled lazily into the distance, far too evenly spaced to feel natural.
"Wait a second," he muttered, sitting up. His voice was deeper than usual, gruffer, and his body—bigger. Stronger. And his left arm and leg… were gone.
Gildarts—no, he—had just been reading Fairy Tail in his bedroom hours ago. The final arc, where Acnologia clashed with the Dragon Slayers. He'd been a normal guy. An anime fan. No special powers. Just a worn volume in hand and instant noodles steaming by his bedside.
Now he was in the body of Gildarts Clive. The absentee father and S-Class Crush magic mage.
Except this Gildarts didn't have magic. He could feel it. No crackling aura, no sensation of power. Just muscle memory and a faint tingling, like static electricity that never discharged.
And worse—this wasn't Fiore. This was Long Ring Long Land.
He recognized it instantly. That ridiculously long bodied song on the ground. The stork flying by that looked like it had a pool noodle for a neck. He was in One Piece. On the same island where the Straw Hats had once played Davy Back Fight.
He stood up unsteadily, adjusting the thick black cloak that draped over his shoulders. It felt wrong—like cosplay done too well.
He checked his pockets. Nothing but lint, a couple berries (when had those gotten there?), and a scrap of parchment that read: "To live is to adapt. Welcome to the sea of freedom."
Cryptic. Unhelpful. And deeply unsettling.
A breeze stirred the grass. In the distance, he could hear the sound of hooves. Not ordinary hooves. Hooorse hooves.
He clenched his fists. No magic. No Devil Fruit. Just a burly, magic-less man with one arm, one leg, and zero idea what the hell was going on.
"…I need to find food," he muttered. "Then a boat."
And if this world ran by the logic he knew it did, he'd need to find strength fast. Because in the Grand Line, being weak wasn't just dangerous—it was fatal.
— — —
The sun hung low in the sky by the time Gildarts realized he was hungry—achingly, desperately so. He had wandered the wide, flat plains of the island, dragging his prosthetic leg awkwardly over tall grass and uneven earth. Every few steps reminded him of how unfamiliar this body still was, despite the overwhelming instinct buried in its muscles.
He'd found a grove of squat trees bearing strange, round fruits. They didn't look like Devil Fruits—no swirls, no ominous aura—but he wasn't exactly eager to gamble with his only source of hydration. So, after testing one with a small bite and waiting an hour to see if he keeled over (he didn't), he stuffed his cloak full of the edible ones.
But fruit alone wouldn't sustain him. His stomach craved something heartier.
At dusk, he spotted a distant shape moving on the horizon: a long-faced fox with sharp yellow eyes. Gildarts crouched low behind a boulder and watched it graze. He considered his options. No weapons. No powers. Just brute strength and half a body.
"C'mon," he whispered. "You used to fight dragons…"
Except this Gildarts didn't. Not yet. And the fox-thing looked fast.
He found a long branch and sharpened the end against a jagged rock. It wasn't elegant, but it gave him something to grip—a makeshift spear. For an hour he stalked it in a wide circle, trying not to alert the beast until, with a desperate roar, he charged it. It bolted instantly, but the terrain worked in his favor: the long legs of the creature got tangled in thick grass, and with a leap he didn't know he could still manage, he tackled it down.
He wasn't proud of how messy the fight was. The bites. The bruises. The panicked shouting. But when it was done, and the creature lay still beneath him, Gildarts felt a grim satisfaction. He was still alive.
— — —
Nightfall brought a chill that clung to the bones. Gildarts managed to spark a fire using flint he'd chipped from a rockface, and one of the old tricks he'd half-remembered from a survival show.
As the meat sizzled over the flames, he sat back and stared into the firelight, letting the crackling heat thaw the ache in his limbs. The stars overhead were unfamiliar—denser, scattered across the sky like someone had upturned a chest of diamonds over ink.
He thought about his old life.
Would anyone notice he was gone? Did his body just vanish? Was he dead?
He pulled the parchment from earlier and stared at it again:
"To live is to adapt. Welcome to the sea of freedom."
It had the feeling of something written by a bored god. Or maybe a game master.
He took a bite of the meat—surprisingly tender—and chewed slowly.
"This world isn't going to wait for me to get my bearings," he said to the night. "If I want to survive, I'll need strength. Power."
His eyes drifted to the horizon.
Devil Fruits. He'd read enough to know they were rare, but this was still the Grand Line. And somewhere on this island, in this ocean, one might be waiting.
And if not?
Then he'd just have to get strong the old-fashioned way.
Because pirate crews would come through here eventually. Marines. Bounty hunters. Worse.
And when they did, he'd be ready.
Or he'd be dead.