North Blue was cold even in summer.
The deck boards were slick under his feet, worn by salt and rain. Every morning started the same: line up, get shouted at, grab a tasteless lump of ration bread and something they generously called coffee. It wasn't hot enough to warm his hands.
His hands stayed cold, just like the rest of him.
He didn't remember signing up. The marines came to his island — a place nobody cared about, not even on maps most of the time. They picked young men like him, strong enough to carry a gun, weak enough to obey.
He had thought, maybe, he could protect someone. Do something that mattered. That idea lasted as long as it took to board the marine ship.
Here, he was nothing.
---
"Move faster, you worthless barnacles!" a marine officer barked from the upper deck. "Check weapons, clean up your sorry faces before we dock!"
He moved without thinking. Check the battered marine musket, wipe the barrel, ignore the trembling in the powder pack.
A draftee next to him flinched too slow — the officer slammed the butt of a musket into the boy's face. Blood splashed the boards. No one stopped.
He didn't stop, either.
---
They told them their mission in a single breath: intercept a pirate crew that had been raiding merchant ships.
Pirates, marines — it didn't matter. Both took what they wanted. Both left someone else hungry.
He didn't care who was right.
---
At night, he leaned on the railing and stared at the sea. No thoughts of jumping. No daydreams of escape. Just gray waves beneath a gray sky.
Sometimes he wondered if he was still breathing.
---
One evening, he saw it.
The crate.
A marine guard stood in front of a thick steel door below deck. He had followed the guard's route during a supply shift — no one noticed him then, either.
The crate itself looked heavy, reinforced with chains and metal plates.
Rumors crawled through the draftees and marines:
"A Devil Fruit from a pirate wreck."
"Supposed to be delivered to HQ."
"Maybe it can make you fly, or turn into fire, or something insane like that."
They laughed, bragged about what they'd do if they had it. He didn't laugh.
He looked at the crate and thought: A fruit that can turn you into something else.
Then he turned away.
---
Days blurred together. Morning drills, dry bread, blank stares.
He moved because he was told to. Ate because he had to.
A shape without a purpose.
---
Then came the trap.
A floating barrel drifted ahead at dawn. A marine shouted — too late. Cannon fire ripped through the fog. The deck exploded in splinters and screams.
Officers roared orders: "Battle stations! Protect the cargo! Return fire!"
Smoke swallowed everything.
---
He didn't think about fighting back.
He didn't think about dying.
He thought about the fruit.
---
He knew where it was.
While marines scrambled and screamed above, he slipped away, ducking behind crates, moving down the tight staircase into the lower decks.
It was darker below, the air stinking of brine and gunpowder. The ship rattled with every hit, beams creaking like breaking bones.
At the end of a narrow hall stood the steel door.
The guard was already dead.
A cannonball had punched through the hull and lodged deep into the guard's chest, pinning him to the wall like a grotesque, silent statue. His face was twisted, eyes glassy, mouth stuck in a half-formed shout.
Blood pooled at his feet, seeping into the boards.
---
He stepped past the corpse and pushed open the door.
Inside, the crate lay cracked open, chains torn from the impact.
---
The fruit sat in the center of the small hold.
It looked wrong.
Its surface was gnarled and lumpy, like twisted knots of driftwood grown together. Swirling ridges crisscrossed it, as if ropes had been melted into its skin. A sickly slate-gray, streaked with pale silver veins that looked almost metallic in the dim light.
It didn't look like food. It didn't look like anything that should exist.
---
He stepped forward.
He wasn't thinking about power.
He wasn't thinking about living or dying.
He wasn't thinking at all.
---
Anything is better than this.
---
His fingers closed around it. It felt heavy, like holding a wet stone.
He bit down.
---
It tasted vile. Bitter, metallic, thick like rotting kelp. He gagged, nearly spit it out, but forced it down.
A wave of something — heat, cold, a tightness that wrapped around his ribs and squeezed. His knees buckled.
He gasped, breath scraping in his throat.
---
Nothing happened.
He waited, eyes wide, heartbeat roaring.
Still nothing.
---
Shouts and gunfire rattled above.
His eyes fell on the dead guard's sidearm, a small single-shot flintlock pistol, lying near his limp hand.
He bent down, fingers brushing it. In his other hand, he held his own marine-issued musket.
A sudden shiver ran up his arms. Something inside whispered: If you want… it will happen.
---
He hesitated, mind blank.
Then, without truly knowing what he wanted, he forced them together.
The weapons jerked in his grip, metal grinding, wood twisting like wet rope.
A shape formed: a bulky, pistol-like firearm with three short barrels. It was heavy and crooked, the barrels uneven, the grip awkwardly thick.
He turned it over in his hands, heart thudding.
Was this usable? He didn't know. It felt more like a half-formed idea than a weapon — something unfinished, rough, almost like a sketch on paper rather than a finished drawing.
---
His eyes darted around the room — broken mast pieces, iron nails, splintered shields.
He picked up two shards of metal and forced them together. They mashed into a bent, brittle blade that cracked at the hilt when he lifted it.
He tried again — a chunk of railing and a broken helmet. The result: a lopsided shield that buckled under its own weight.
---
Breathing hard, he dropped the failures at his feet.
Why?
---
He closed his eyes. Tried again.
This time, he imagined a small, sturdy dagger — something simple, solid, balanced.
When he pressed two scrap pieces together, they folded and curved almost naturally. The blade came out straight, the grip rough but strong.
---
He opened his eyes, staring at it.
The shape was still crude, but far more functional than before.
---
Intent.
He realized it then — if he didn't have a clear idea of what he wanted, the fruit itself filled in the gaps... and what it gave him was often useless.
If his mind was sharp, if he saw it clearly, the result followed that vision.
---
He looked down at the three-barrel sidearm again, heavy and awkward in his hand.
Not quite a weapon yet. More like a question mark.
---
His breath trembled in his chest.
Not freedom. Not strength.
A chance to become something else.