" " - out loud
' ' - thoughts
Enjoy :)
…
"..."
The silence was deafening…but the stew was good. That was, unfortunately, about the only safe observation I had managed to make in the last ten minutes.
I sat at the same dining table I had eaten at hundreds of times growing up, Mum across from me and Dad at the end, while the loudest silence I had experienced in months settled over the three of us. Spoons scraped against bowls, the little lamp by the window crackled, and every few seconds Mum would glance at me before looking away again the moment I noticed. Dad had chosen the opposite strategy and had simply been staring at me since we sat down, making absolutely no effort to pretend otherwise.
My new wanted poster was still sitting on the counter behind him.
80,000,000 facing outwards
I took another spoonful. Mum really had outdone herself, too. The broth was thick, there was plenty of meat, and she'd put in more pepper than most people probably considered reasonable, which meant she remembered exactly how I liked it.
"This is really good," I said eventually.
Mum's face brightened almost immediately. "Thank you, sweetheart. I added more pepper, like you like"
"Yeah, it's great." I smiled.
Dad slowly put his spoon down and rested both hands on the table. "So, just to make sure I understand what's happening here. My son disappears for months, becomes a wanted murderer, somehow ends up being chased around Port Tragedy by Vice Admiral Garp, then destroys the Arlong Pirates and comes home worth eighty million berries…and we're opening with the stew."
"Way to ease into it dad." I muttered sarcastically.
"Kai."
"What?"
Mum pressed her lips together, clearly trying not to laugh. Dad caught it immediately and pointed at her. "Don't encourage him."
"I'm not encouraging him."
"You're smiling."
"I'm happy my son still likes my cooking."
Dad stared at me for several seconds, and I took another spoonful. Mum reached across the table and wrapped her fingers around my wrist. "You're really alright?"
Not what happened or why I was wanted. Not whether the bounty poster was telling the truth. Just whether I was alright.
I nodded. "Yeah. I've had a bit of a weird few months, but I'm alright."
Dad's eyebrows rose. "A bit?"
Mum slapped Dad on the back of the head.
"Alright, alright." Dad hissed.
I leaned back in my chair and rubbed the wheel mark across the back of my hand with my thumb, trying to work out where the hell somebody was even supposed to begin explaining the last few months. Shellstown felt much further away than it actually was. Vale, Toma, the ledger, my little boat sinking, the Blue Gull, Port Tragedy, Garp, Smoker, Nami, Arlong, then whatever the hell had happened to me at the bottom of that pool. There were much easier stories to tell over stew.
"I know you didn't ask, but I've gotta let a few things off my chest." I began.
Dad's expression tightened, but he didn't interrupt.
"Vale was dirty. She was extorting people in Shellstown, taking money and supplies, controlling medicine and using the Marines to keep everyone quiet. If people couldn't pay, they didn't get what they needed. I found the records in her office with the names, payments and lists of medicine she'd withheld from families."
Mum's fingers stayed around my wrist.
I looked at her. "On the day it happened, there was this boy; his name was Toma. He was young. I don't know exactly how old."
Her mouth tightened.
"He stole medicine for his mother. Vale dragged him into the yard to make an example of him, and I told them to stop. Vale ordered them to keep going, then ordered the Marines to deal with me when I refused."
Dad finally spoke. "And that became the whole branch?"
"Pretty much." I said, mixing my stew. "I killed her."
Neither of them reacted dramatically. That somehow made it harder.
"I got angry. Really angry. I don't regret stopping her, and I don't regret helping the people there. If I went back, I'd still step in. But with Vale herself…" I rubbed the side of my jaw, remembering the yard, the blood and Mallor looking at me afterward. "I went too far."
Mum studied me carefully. "Do you think stopping her was right?"
"Yes of course I do."
"And what you did after she couldn't fight back?"
I hesitated, then shook my head. "No."
Her thumb moved once over my wrist. Dad sat quietly for a few seconds before letting out a breath through his nose. "I wish you'd found another way."
"So do I." I sighed.
"But if what you're telling us is true, standing there and letting a child be beaten because the person ordering it had a Marine coat wouldn't have been right either." He scratched at his beard and looked down at the table. "I'm not going to tell you killing someone is nothing, Kai, and I'm definitely not going to tell you everything you did afterwards was fine. I do understand why you stepped in."
Something in my chest loosened at that.
Mum nodded slowly. "You should've come home."
"I wanted to."
That surprised both of them enough that I smiled faintly. "I thought about it when I left Shellstown. But the Marines were going to come after me, and I couldn't risk bringing them here."
Dad pointed his spoon at me. "Best decision I've heard all evening."
Mum kicked him under the table. Dad grunted and glared at her while I hid a smile behind another spoonful of stew.
Strangely, the room started feeling more normal after that. There was still an eighty-million-berry wanted poster on the counter and the small matter of their son becoming one of the most notorious people in East Blue, but this was my family. Apparently our threshold for unusual dinner conversation had become incredibly high.
I finished another mouthful before remembering the other fairly significant thing I'd never told them. "Oh, yeah. There's something else."
Both of them stopped eating.
Dad closed his eyes. "Of course there is."
"It's not worse."
"That sentence no longer reassures me."
I held up my right hand and turned it so the wheel mark caught the lamplight. "You remember this?"
Mum leaned closer. "That mark you started wrapping when you were little?"
"Yeah."
I scratched my cheek, already knowing this was about to go badly. "So…I ate a Devil Fruit."
Mum stared at me. Dad stared at me. I gave them what I felt was a reassuring smile.
Mum slowly put her spoon down. "You ate the weird fruit."
"Well, technically, yes."
She pointed directly at me. "I ASKED YOU!"
"To be fair, you asked me whether I ate something weird almost every week."
"BECAUSE YOU KEPT EATING WEIRD THINGS!"
Dad suddenly leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowing as something clicked into place. "The fishing trips."
I looked at him. "What about it?"
"You sat as far from the water as you could without falling off the other side of the boat. You wouldn't lean over the railing, and you kept staring at the sea."
I just nodded.
"You little bastard."
Mum slapped his arm. "Don't call him that."
"He lied to us!"
Mum leaned over the table and grabbed my face between both hands. "You ate a Devil Fruit and didn't tell us?"
"It sounds worse when you say it like that." I cringed.
"There is no version where it sounds good! You could have drowned!"
I went quiet for perhaps half a second too long.
Mum noticed immediately. "You drowned."
"No…"
Dad's eyes narrowed. "Kai."
"I was underwater for a little while."
Mum went pale. "How long?"
"Long enough."
"Kai!"
"I got out!"
"How?"
"That part is complicated."
Dad rubbed both hands down his face. "Naturally."
I freed my face from Mum's grip and showed them the mark again. "The fruit lets me adapt to things. Damage, environments, attacks, sometimes techniques. If something keeps affecting me and I survive it long enough, my body starts finding ways to deal with it."
Mum looked at the mark, then up at me. "That's why you changed so much."
"Probably. Training helped too."
Dad looked me over. "I thought it was the fish."
Mum's head snapped toward him. "I TOLD YOU!"
"You were joking!"
"I was right!"
"You said too much protein made him rebellious."
"It clearly did!"
I held both hands up. "Can we please not blame the protein?"
Neither of them listened.
Eventually, once they finished arguing about whether my ridiculous growth was caused by Devil Fruit powers or their superior parenting and diet, I managed to explain the broad version of what had happened since leaving Shellstown. I told them about the seastone cuff Nami had put on me in Port Tragedy and how my body seemed to compensate for the weakness rather than simply making the seastone stop working. I explained Smoker and the Logia problem, though I left out the part where Nami and I had turned his jitte into what was effectively a mutual suffering stick because I didn't think that improved anything.
Then I got to Arlong.
Mum's expression had already tightened at the mention of Cocoyasi, and when I explained that Arlong had worked out my weakness and dumped me into the pool, she looked like she was reconsidering whether she could somehow ban me from the ocean entirely.
"And then?" Dad asked.
"I changed."
"To what?"
I grinned. "Big Raga."
They both stared.
Dad frowned.
"It's what I call it." I shrugged
"What is Big Raga?"
"Big."
He waited.
"Raga."
Dad looked at Mum. Mum shrugged helplessly. "I don't know what to do with him either."
Dad's expression shifted as recognition settled in. "The creature in the newspaper. That was you?"
"Yeah."
Mum stared. "And you turned back?"
"Eventually. Nami helped."
The name escaped before I could stop it.
Mum and Dad's eyebrows rose.
I reached for more stew.
"Who is Nami?" Mum asked.
"A navigator."
"A girl?"
"Mum."
"What?"
"Don't."
"I only asked if she was a girl."
Dad looked down at his food with the expression of a man who had no intention of joining this battle.
Mum leaned forward slightly. "Is she pretty?"
"I am not having this conversation."
"So yes."
"I didn't say that."
"You didn't need to."
I pointed toward Dad. "Control your wife."
He laughed right in my face.
…
By the next morning, Goat Island knew I was home.
This happened because Mum told one neighbour.
One.
By breakfast, half the village had heard. By mid-morning, three separate people had walked past our house for absolutely no reason while making no effort whatsoever to hide the fact they were trying to look through the fence.
Dad put me to work repairing the fence.
"You have an eighty-million-berry criminal at your disposal and this is what you choose?"
He handed me another post. "Labour builds character."
"I have enough character."
"That's the problem."
I drove the post into the ground with one hand. Dad looked at it, paused, then handed me three more.
Exploitation.
Things got worse when the News Coo betrayed me. I'd expected him to stay near my ship at the little harbour, maybe harass a fisherman or extort somebody for lunch. Instead, he appeared around midday, landed directly on our fence and immediately accepted crackers from my mother like he'd known her his entire life.
"You're feeding him?" I asked.
"He's adorable." Mum cooed.
The bird made a satisfied little noise while Mum scratched beneath its beak.
Dad glanced over from the fence. "Seems friendly."
"He kidnapped himself onto my ship."
The News Coo leaned harder into Mum's hand.
"Look at him," she said. "He likes us."
"He likes crackers."
The bird looked at me while chewing.
I narrowed my eyes. "You know what you are."
It ate another cracker.
By afternoon, Dad had finally run out of jobs he could reasonably force someone my size to perform, which was when Mum brought out the old family albums.
"No."
"Yes."
"Mum."
"You've been gone for months."
She dropped the thick album onto the table, sending a small cloud of dust into the air, and opened it before I could stop her. The first photograph was of a tiny dark-haired child standing completely naked inside a washbasin with both fists raised.
I covered the page with my hand. "No."
"You loved baths."
Dad walked past behind us. "You used to scream when we took you out."
I turned around. "Why are you helping?"
"Because this is funny."
Mum pushed my hand aside and began turning pages. Years of evidence against me. Me covered in flour, me asleep underneath the kitchen table, me sitting inside a basket for reasons nobody remembered. One especially damaging photograph showed me standing on the roof wearing two bedsheets tied around my shoulders.
I smiled, picking up the photo. "Aye, my potential man cosplay"
Another page turned, and Mum started laughing before I even saw the picture. "You were awful during the pregnancy."
My finger stopped.
Dad, still within earshot, joined in immediately. "Kicked constantly."
Mum pointed toward her stomach. "Right here. Every night."
I stared at the baby photograph on the page, and something extremely old shifted loose in my memory.
Oh no.
I was back when I first reincarnated into the world. I had to start in the womb, which was insanely uncomfortable. I remembered darkness first. Warmth, pressure and absolutely no space whatsoever.
It'd been my first proper experience of this world after dying, meeting that silhouette and finding out some higher beings had decided to send me into One Piece to settle a fucking powerscaling argument.
I remembered waking up confused, unable to move properly or breathe like I expected, with a huge heartbeat surrounding me and muffled voices somewhere outside my fleshy prison. It hadn't taken me long to work out where I was.
Unfortunately, the main thought dominating my newly reincarnated consciousness had not been anything profound about getting another chance at life.
"..."
'LET ME OUT. LET ME OUUUUT!'
I remembered kicking as hard as my tiny body could manage.
Something outside shifted, followed by Mum's muffled voice. "Kay! He kicked!"
Oh.
They could feel me.
Excellent.
I kicked again.
'YES. HELLO. I AM CONSCIOUS IN HERE.'
Another kick.
'LET ME OUT!'
Another.
'LET ME OUUUUUT!'
Apparently, I had spent the last stretch of pregnancy trying to prison-break my own mother.
I slowly returned to the present and covered my face with both hands.
Mum leaned closer. "Kai?"
"I owe you an apology."
She blinked. "For what?"
"Nothing."
We kept going until we eventually reached their wedding photographs, and the tone changed a little. Dad looked much younger, obviously, wearing a simple dark jacket and a…mullet?.
"Oh my God."
He frowned. "What?"
"Your hair."
Mum burst out laughing. Dad touched his current hair defensively. "There was nothing wrong with it. It was fashionable."
"No."
"It was."
Mum slid the picture closer. She was standing beside him in a simple white dress, flowers in one hand, laughing at something outside the frame.
I smiled despite myself. "You look nice, Mum."
"Nice?" Dad repeated. "She looked beautiful."
Mum's face softened and blushed slightly, and Dad leaned down to kiss the side of her head.
I recoiled immediately. "Eugh."
"You asked."
"I did not ask for live demonstrations."
Mum turned and kissed his cheek.
I pushed my chair back. "I'm leaving."
They laughed, and I shook my head, sitting down again while turning toward the next page, though I kept watching them from the corner of my eye. They had always been like this. Embarrassingly affectionate, loud about it and somehow still genuinely happy after all these years.
They argued constantly because Mum could turn almost anything into an emotional event and Dad had the subtlety of a brick, but they had never doubted each other.
They loved each other.
It was nice to see, i was almost envious.
Then, for some stupid reason, orange hair flashed through my mind. Nami sitting beside me after Arlong, Nami asleep against my shoulder, Nami hugging me at the dock and telling me not to disappear.
I blinked and pushed the thought away.
Nope. Not unpacking that today.
When I reached for the next photograph, something slipped from behind it and landed on the table. It was an old folded document, the corners softened with age.
"What's this?"
Mum leaned over. "Our marriage certificate, I think."
I unfolded it carefully and skimmed over the faded ink. Names, dates, signatures and an official stamp near the bottom. There was a dark smudge across part of Dad's name, and when I tilted the paper toward the window, the letters became clearer.
KAY D'VOSS
I frowned.
Then I looked at Dad.
"Dad."
"Mm?"
"Why does this say Kay D'Voss?"
He glanced toward the paper. "Because that's my name."
I waited.
He waited.
" I thought your name was Kayd."
Dad blinked. "No."
"What do you mean, no?"
"My name is Kay."
Mum was already starting to smile.
"How the fuck have I known you my entire life and not known your name?"
"You did know my name."
"WRONGLY!"
Dad started laughing. "This is absolutely your fault."
"How?"
"When you were little, you asked my full name. I said Kay D'Voss, and you decided that meant Kayd Voss."
"That is a perfectly reasonable mistake for a child."
Yeah, a child with a teen's mind, how wtf did I miss that!?
"We corrected you." Mum added
"How many times?"
Dad thought about it. "Twice, maybe."
"TWICE?"
Mum lost it completely.
"You gave up after twice?"
"You called me Dad ninety-nine per cent of the time!"
"That is not the point!"
I looked back down at the certificate, still deeply disturbed by the revelation that my father's name had apparently been different this entire time.
Then my brain caught up with the more important part.
The D.
I looked at Dad again, slower this time. "Wait."
His smile faded slightly.
I lifted the paper. "The D."
"What about it?"
"What's the D?"
"It's part of the family name."
My mouth went dry.
No fucking way.
"Part of the family name how?"
Dad pulled out the chair opposite me and sat down. "It's old. My grandfather used it, and his father did too. Apparently it used to be written differently."
My heart started doing stupid things. "How?"
Dad pointed toward the certificate. "D'Voss is how we write it now. My grandfather said the older records had the D separate."
I stared at him.
"Separate how?"
"D. Voss."
Oh.
Oh, fuck off.
Monkey D. Luffy.
Gol D. Roger.
Marshall D. Teach.
Jaguar D. Saul.
Trafalgar D. Water Law.
And apparently, sitting in a house on one of the most irrelevant islands in East Blue, there was Kay D. fucking Voss.
What the FUCK!?
I had spent my entire second life thinking I was some random Goat Island extra who happened to get handed Mahoraga's adaptation because higher-dimensional gods had an unresolved Discord argument. Apparently my bloodline had come with a fucking lore tag the entire time.
Dad noticed my expression. "What?"
What was I supposed to say? Hey Dad, funny story: that letter is attached to some of the most important lunatics in recorded history. The Pirate King had it, the future Pirate King has it, and the World Government gets extremely strange whenever anybody starts investigating what it actually means. Also, I know this because I watched your universe recreationally before choking to death on a grape.
Easy.
Mum looked down at the certificate. "So does that mean Kai is technically a D'Voss too?"
Dad nodded. "By blood, yes."
I whipped toward him. "Excuse me?"
"We registered you as Voss."
"Why?"
Mum raised one hand. "I thought D'Voss sounded pretentious."
I stared at her.
She shrugged. "It does."
Dad laughed while I looked back down at the certificate. "So my name is technically Kai D'Voss."
"If you want to use the old family name."
"Did Granddad ever tell you what the D meant?"
"No."
"Nothing?"
Dad thought for a moment. "He used to say not to be ashamed of it."
"That's it?"
"And not to advertise it to government officials."
I stared.
Dad frowned slightly. "He had some issues with his taxes or something like that; I don't know."
Of course he did.
"Anything else?"
"He said the name was older than anything our family remembered, and that people had gotten into trouble over the D before. Apparently that's why somebody eventually folded it into the surname."
I leaned back in my chair, staring at the old paper.
Dad tapped the table. "Don't get stuck on it; it's just one letter."
Mum patted my shoulder. "I still prefer Kai Voss."
I looked at her. "It's still…interesting"
"Well, it doesn't matter anyhow," she said cheerfully. "You're still my baby, no matter the surname."
"Eugh."
She hugged me anyway.
…
I stayed another day.
I could have stayed longer. Part of me wanted to.
I helped Dad finish the fence, ate enough of Mum's cooking that even she finally admitted feeding me might actually be expensive, and spent time walking around Goat Island without needing to think about Marines, pirates or how quickly I could reach the nearest exit if something went wrong.
I went back to the orchard where that stupid mosquito had confirmed my Devil Fruit powers years ago. A few kids were picking fruit there, and one recognised me from my wanted poster before spending the next twenty minutes following me from what he apparently considered a safe distance.
Eventually, I turned around. "Do you want something?"
He froze before running away.
That evening, Dad and I sat near the shore and watched the sea. Neither of us bothered fishing this time, which, considering my relationship with seawater, was probably for the best.
"You're leaving again," he said after a while.
I glanced at him. "Yeah."
"Grand Line?"
"Grand Line."
He rubbed his hands together and kept looking toward the horizon. "You could stay longer. Your mother would like that."
"I know."
"So would I."
That came quieter.
I looked at him, but he kept his attention on the water.
"I know."
He nodded once. We sat there for a bit longer before he asked, "Trying to become the strongest? Did I get that right?"
I smiled faintly. "Yeah."
"That hasn't changed at all?"
Dad finally turned toward me. "Then keeping you here because we're worried would only make you miserable."
"Pretty much."
He wrapped his arm around my broad shoulder.
The next morning, I told Mum properly. She cried, denied crying while clearly crying, then packed enough food to provision my ship for a small campaign. I decided not to mention that the News Coo had become surprisingly talented at stealing my meals because some problems were mine to handle.
By late morning, the three of us were standing at the little harbour. My ship rocked gently against the dock, considerably larger than anything that normally visited Goat Island, while the News Coo sat on the railing eating something that I was almost certain belonged to me.
Mum adjusted the front of my shirt.
Then adjusted it again.
"Mum."
"Hold still."
"I'm about to sail into the Grand Line. I don't think my collar matters."
"It matters to me."
I let her fix it.
Dad checked the rope tying the ship to the dock, gave it one final pull, then looked over the hull. "You stole this?"
"Liberated."
"From?"
"A criminal."
"So stole." Dad nodded slowly. "Good ship."
"Thank you."
"I was complimenting the ship."
Mum finally stepped back and looked up at me. Her eyes were wet again, though she was trying not to make a whole event out of it this time.
"You'll write?"
"If I can."
"Come home."
"I will."
Dad walked over and put one hand against my shoulder. "Don't do anything stupid."
I stared at him.
He stared back, sighed, and amended it. "Don't do anything irreversibly stupid."
"That I can attempt."
Mum laughed through her tears, and then they both hugged me.
Mum wrapped both arms around my waist while Dad pulled me in from the side, and for once I didn't complain about being crushed by affection. I simply held them back.
I loved them so fucking much.
My throat tightened, and I blinked hard while holding them a little longer. Eventually, Mum loosened her grip enough to wipe her face, while Dad cleared his throat and turned his head toward the sea like the horizon had suddenly become incredibly interesting.
I stepped back and felt something warm run down my cheek. I wiped it away, frowned and looked toward the sky.
Bright blue.
Not a cloud in sight.
Dry as a motherfucker.
I sniffed once and shook my head. "Damn. Rain's really coming down today."
Dad made a choking sound that turned into laughter; Mum immediately grabbed me for another hug, and neither of them had the decency to correct me.
…
End of Chapter!
Word Count - 4196
a/n -
Alright, this one was a lot more chill than I intended, but who's to say that's a bad thing.
I really wanted this chapter to just give him some time with his parents again. We haven't properly seen Anastasia and Kay in a while, and after Shellstown, Port Tragedy, Cocoyasi and everything else, I thought Kai needed a chapter where he could just sit down, eat some stew and actually process some of what happened.
I also wanted the Vale conversation in there because Kai has mostly been able to keep moving since it happened. He still thinks stopping her was the right thing to do, and I agree with him there, but what he did after she was beaten was obviously WAY too far. Having his parents understand why he acted, without pretending the whole thing was okay, felt important.
Also yes.
KAI IS A D.
Or technically a D'Voss, because apparently hiding the D by smashing it into the surname was the greatest piece of family security imaginable （〃｀ 3′〃）
I've had ideas for this for a while, and no, it does not mean Kai suddenly knows what the Will of D. is or that the entire mystery is getting explained next chapter. If anything, he now has another thing to be confused about. Bro came home for dinner and accidentally discovered lore.
And obviously we got a tiny bit more Nami propaganda in there. I saw you people discussing them last arc. I know what you're doing. 👁️👄👁️
Now, for the other important thing:
JJBA × JJK WON THE POLL!
So that'll be the next side story/project I start working on!
Before I properly lock the premise in though, I wanted to run a few ideas past you guys because there are a couple directions I think could be really fun.
The main idea right now is DIO appearing/reincarnating into the JJK world right after his death at the hands of Jotaro, meaning this is fully DIO with all his memories, ego, knowledge of The World and everything else suddenly dropped into a world of cursed energy and sorcerers.
Another idea is doing an MC with something closer to Gold Experience, because I think Gold Experience interacting with cursed energy, Reverse Cursed Technique, souls, Domains and all the weird biological bullshit in JJK could get VERY interesting.
Or, third option:
You guys suggest something.
Seriously. Give me your JoJo × JJK ideas, whether it's a specific character, Stand, reincarnation setup, cursed technique interaction, whatever. If somebody cooks harder than me, I will shamelessly steal it and give you credit (○｀ 3′○)
Anyway, hope you enjoyed the chapter! Let me know what you thought about Kai's family, the D'Voss reveal, and where you think the Grand Line stuff is heading from here.
As always, thanks for reading <3