"For Luffy and his bravery!" shouted a red-haired pirate captain. As he uttered these words, the party bar erupted in cheers.
We find ourselves on Dawn Island, the home of Monkey D. Luffy. The seven-year-old boy resides in Fusha Village, located in the Goa Kingdom. The village is relatively small, and usually nothing of note happens there. However, for the past year, a pirate crew has been using the village as their base of operations in the East Blue. This brings us to the present, just after our young protagonist attempted to prove his courage to his role model by stabbing himself under the eye with a knife.
"It didn't hurt at all! Not even a little bit!" the young man shouted with a grin. Luffy was trying, unsuccessfully, to hide the pain on his face from his role model, the captain of the Red-Haired Pirates, Shanks the Red-Haired.
"Liar!" Shanks shouted at the boy, giving him a light slap. "You could have gone blind!"
Luffy clutched his head and pouted. "Look! Now you know I can be a pirate! Besides, my punch is as strong as a gun!" he exclaimed, throwing punches in the air. "Please, take me with you, Shanks!"
Behind them, the rest of Shanks' crew were beginning to like the idea of the boy joining them on their next voyage: "Come on, Shanks, why don't you let the boy come! It would be fun to see him do more stupid things!" Several crew members shouted in agreement.
"Alright, alright..." Shanks began. At this, Luffy vibrated with excitement; he was finally going to be a pirate! "...But only if one of you takes his place here in Fusha!" the man finished with a mocking smile.
The reaction was immediate. "Sorry, kid! Looks like you're stuck here!" they all shouted in unison.
"Traitors!" Luffy shouted indignantly.
"Look, Luffy, you're too young. If you were about ten years older, maybe we'd talk, but you're just a seven-year-old brat who can't even swim. You sink like an anchor and your punch is as strong as a gun? Yeah, right, I'll believe it when I see it!" Shanks said before bursting into laughter. "What would we do if you fell overboard during a fight?"
"Then I'll be a pirate who never abandons ship! Ha! Now take me with you!" Luffy replied with determination.
"But then, how could you have amazing adventures if you never leave the ship? Having adventures is the best part of being a pirate! Well, that and drinking all you want!" exclaimed Shanks, as his crew shouted their agreement.
Before Luffy could argue, Shanks began telling him stories of the adventures he and his crew had experienced and some of the trouble they'd gotten into. As the man recounted his tales, time seemed to fly by for the boy, who listened, captivated by the pirate crew's adventures. The previous argument was almost completely forgotten.
After a while, Shanks finally stopped telling stories and went back to drinking and partying with his crew, leaving Luffy alone at the bar. Quickly getting bored with no one to entertain him, Luffy started looking for something to do. His gaze eventually fell on a treasure chest at the back of the bar. With stars in his eyes at the thought of pirate treasure, Luffy headed toward the chest to inspect its contents.
As the young man approached, he began to hear an unintelligible whisper. Looking around the bar, he wondered why he could hear such a low whisper when the party around him was so loud. Fixing his gaze on the chest, he could feel the whisper coming from it. How he felt it, he had no idea, only that he felt it.
As he approached, the whisper grew louder, not in pitch, but in volume, as if someone were whispering, but only... louder. More curious than before, realizing the whisper was coming from the treasure chest, the boy looked around the bar before carefully opening it.
When the chest opened, Luffy could finally understand what he was hearing, without bothering to wonder why he was the only one who could. The rest of the bar's occupants seemed oblivious to the voice coming from the box.
'Eat me.'
'Eat me.'
'Eat me.'
Luffy finally opened the lid completely and could see what looked like a purple fruit about the size of a grapefruit. The strange thing about the fruit wasn't its color or size, but that its skin seemed to be covered in spirals.
Upon seeing something he'd never tasted before, Luffy's stomach began to rumble, and like a child driven by hunger, he reached out for the purple curiosity, hoping it would taste good. However, just as he was about to grab the strange fruit, he hesitated.
'EAT ME.'
'EAT ME.'
'EAT ME.'
The voice was now much louder than before, and she didn't quite understand why. However, what she did know was that she wanted it to be quiet again. So she quickly withdrew her hand and closed the chest; the whisper became silent and unintelligible once more.
Suddenly, the bar doors burst open and a group of rough-looking men entered. They scanned the establishment, observing all the pirates, and finally reached the bar. Luffy turned from his spot in front of the now-locked treasure chest to watch the newcomers, almost completely forgetting the voice and the fruit... almost.
"My name is Higuma! I'm the leader of these mountain bandits and a man with an eight million berri bounty on his head," the man at the front declared smugly. "We're not here to cause trouble, we just want a nice drink." He looked around and counted heads. "About twelve barrels of your best stuff should do the trick."
The waitress, Makino, looked at the man and replied with an apologetic smile, "I'm sorry sir, we don't have any alcohol at the moment. Can I offer you something else?"
Higuma frowned. "Did you run out of alcohol?" The man turned and looked at the pirates at the bar. "And what are these pirates drinking?" he asked, replacing his frown with a menacing smile.
.
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