OPSR: Chapter 04

“What are you doing, boy?” Zeff asked me as he tried to look at the paper I was writing on. “I’m trying to narrow down which devil fruit I want to eat.” His eyes narrowed slightly before he spoke again. “You know those things are rarer than a chest full of gold on the sea, right?” “Yeah, but I know I’ll get one for myself. I’m trying to figure out which ones are best for me, and which are best for my future crewmates.”

He looked over my list before saying. “Heh, I kind of had you pegged as someone who would want the invisible fruit.” I just kept writing and scribbling off fruits that were powerful, but too hard to get to before they’d be eaten. “Nah, that fruit is junk. Three other fruits give invisibility, but also something else.” His eyes widened slightly before I turned back to the page. He then asked the next question I expected.

“Oh? Which would those be?” I read them off. “The spector fruit, the psychic fruit, and the phase fruit.” Asking the next question I expected, he continues.  “And what does each fruit do on top of letting you become invisible?” “The spector fruit allows for flight, intangibility to allow you to pass through walls and attacks, and invisibility.”

His eyes went wide at the wide variety of techniques the fruit provided before I tossed water on the situation. “These three have confirmed users. One of the royal knights has this one. The fruit is so powerful that she’s never trained a day in her life and still managed to be strong enough to make it as a knight. It’s rumored that she’s the go-between for the CP organization and the royal knights when they both need to coordinate on a mission.”

His eyes went wide again before he asked. “How do you know that?” “My father also had a pension for looking into strong devil fruits. I never really saw the purpose, but I heard enough that I know where some of the stronger ones are, too bad they’re already eaten… Next would be the psychic fruit; it doesn’t really make you invisible. But you can send out a sort of wave that will make people ignore you. The other benefits from the fruit are too long to list, though, and it’s another one with a user already. Someone in Impel Down.”

His eyebrows furrowed again as he asked a question I wasn’t expecting. “Why are you writing the ones that have users down, then? If they have a user, then you obviously can’t eat them.” “Yeah, but they might not always be off the market, and some of them are worth waiting for if I can get my hands on them.” I wasn’t going to tell him that if I got the chance, I’d kill the people who had them.

“Also. These are the devil fruits with users that I wouldn’t mind taking onto my ship.” He looked at the second list on the side with people whom I knew from the original story that had strong Devil Fruits. “Flower fruit, kilo fruit, eleph fruit, bubble fruit, hollow fruit, love fruit, snow fruit, arms fruit, glare fruit, heal fruit… You know all these have a user, and know enough about them that you’d be willing to let them on your crew?”

Now he spoke with shock in his voice. Most people would only let those on their crew if they could trust them implicitly. I cut off his thought process first. “No… I can’t trust every user on that list, and some of them would be too difficult to get on my crew, but if I could get them… They’d be great additions.” I didn’t say that every fruit was eaten by a woman. I wouldn’t sleep with every girl on that list, but an all-female crew besides myself was a wish I wanted to keep in my heart. I knew I’d have to take on some male crew, but the true dream was to have the perfect harem crew. I also had a similar list of every single devil fruit I knew came up in the story, and ones that, if I got the chance, I’d kill to collect for myself or my crewmates.

Just like Blackbeard, with enough time, I could make a group extremely powerful just by stealing others' devil fruits… That is, if my idea for the munch munch fruit worked. “Well, I need you to peel some potatoes, boy. I’m starting to regret bringing you on more and more since you’re so distracted with all this instead of focused on learning how to cook from me.”

“Relax, old man. I already know the basics. It’s only a matter of time before I learn everything from you and surpass your old ass. Isn’t that what you want, train a cook better than yourself, strong enough to search the sea for the All Blue?” He smirked before waving me off. “Fine, get back to your job when you’re done. But if you don’t take this seriously, you’ll never be a good cook, let alone surpass me.”

…

“You’re leaving already? We just got our boat up and working two weeks ago.” Zeff argued with me as I packed my belongings. “I won’t be gone too long, old man. I just need to check and see if someone is still alive or not. Then I’ll be back.” “What does that even mean?” I couldn’t tell him I knew the future and wanted to stop an unnecessary death if I could. “I need to check on a friend, old man. Isn’t that enough? Stop bothering me over this, aren’t I improving faster than you ever expected me to at cooking? What’s a few days' break to help my heart?”

…

I made my way onto a boat, learning the basics of navigation along the way. Luffy was able to go from island to island with Zoro, even though neither had navigation skills. I figured it wouldn’t take more than a week or two to head and check to see if Kuina was dead or not yet. Traveling in the right direction wasn’t as easy as you’d hope.

They made it out that it was setting sail and going in a straight line to the next island, but it wasn’t. Riding the wind meant that in order to keep going forward, I had to sometimes head almost completely perpendicular to the direction I actually wanted to go before correcting almost a hundred and eighty degrees. Sometimes the wind was blowing in the right direction, but rarely did I even have the wind powerful enough to keep me at full speed.

It was much slower than I wanted, just because of the size of the boat I was on. After a day's worth of travel, I stopped at the small island Usopp grew up on and looked around. Kaya’s parents were both alive, but her mother looked sick. If I remember the story correctly, they both die out at sea, but should she really be moving around if she’s in just as bad shape as her daughter is in the story?

After re-supplying, I made my way to the next island. It just occurred to me that Luffy and Zoro’s home islands are right next to each other. The two grew up so close to each other, but just far enough that they’d never meet until they both went to sea. Shimotsuki village was named after its founder, and also the ancestor of the swordman who owned the dojo, and the father of Kuina.

Zoro was ten and Kuina was eleven when she died. It was still months off from Arlong being released(if he even would be in this universe, he may well stay in Impel Down). If the other members remained the same, she might still be alive. I entered the dojo and stopped at the door. My eyes widened and my mouth opened in surprise at the sight of a female Zoro swinging her sword, training along with all the other members of the dojo. I almost screamed out “NANI!?” before I got control of myself and kept looking for Kuina.