Chapter Text
The wind off the sea was soft this morning.
It crept in through the slightly cracked window, bringing with it the scent of salt, sun, and damp old wood. Outside, gulls cried lazily overhead, the same way they always had. The waves whispered against the dock with patient rhythm, as if they had all the time in the world.
Luffy stirred under the blanket with a low grunt, blinking up at the wooden beams overhead.
For a few seconds, he didn’t think anything of it. He was warm, rested—his limbs comfortably heavy. His head felt clear in that rare way it only ever did when he’d had a good meal, a decent nap, and no one yelling in his ear.
He scratched the side of his chest absently, swung his legs over the side of the bed—
—and stopped.
The floor was farther away than it should’ve been.
No, not the floor. His legs.
They were short. Too short.
Luffy blinked. His eyes slowly tracked down his legs, then to his arms. His skin looked... too smooth. No faded nicks. No thickened calluses on the knuckles. No burn stretching down from his left collarbone, crisscrossed with the scar tissue that had once seared with pain every time he laughed too hard.
He placed a hand over his chest and pressed.
Nothing.
The scar wasn’t there.
He sat in silence for a moment.
The quiet was thick. Too thick. This wasn’t the Sunny. He couldn’t hear the groan of Franky’s tools, or the rhythmic padding of Chopper’s hooves on the deck above. There was no humming from Brook, no soft shuffle of Robin turning a page, no half-muffled insults being lobbed between the kitchen and the crow’s nest.
This wasn’t his ship.
And this wasn’t his body.
Luffy stood slowly. The floorboards creaked beneath his bare feet in a way that scraped something loose in his memory. He knew that sound. Had heard it hundreds of times before—when he was a kid.
He turned toward the mirror tucked in the corner of the room.
The boy looking back at him had wild black hair, skin sun-kissed and unmarred, and a face that hadn’t seen a war yet. His eyes were wide and sharp, but there was no exhaustion behind them. No shadow of the seas he’d crossed.
He touched his own cheek, curious more than afraid. It was softer. He hadn’t had stubble in years, but now even the ghost of it was gone.
Luffy blinked again.
“...Huh.”
He glanced to the side of the bed. His hat was resting there, just where he’d always left it.
Worn, familiar.
But even that looked a little too new.
He picked it up. Held it in both hands. Turned it over, gently thumbing the ribbon. No tears. No fraying.
The silence stretched.
Then the door to the room slammed open, and Makino’s voice filled the doorway.
“Luffy?! Are you alright? You shouted.”
He looked up.
Makino.
She looked like herself. Just... younger. Less tired around the eyes. Not as many lines at the corners of her mouth. She was still holding a towel from wiping down the bar, concern etched across her face.
Luffy stared at her. Then at the room. Then at himself again.
She stepped forward, brows furrowed. “You okay?”
He opened his mouth.
Then, flat as dead air:
“…Makino, why are you young?”
She blinked.
“What?”
Luffy sat back down on the bed, rubbing at his neck.
He didn’t know exactly what had happened. Or how. But it was starting to settle in—not in his head, not yet—but in the bones of him. The kind of slow, steady certainty you felt when the wind shifted wrong before a storm. A knowing.
He was seventeen again. Somehow.
But he was still him.
All of him.
And that meant something big had happened. Or was going to.
His lips twitched. Not quite a smile, not yet.
“Makino,” he said, scratching his head, “what’s the date?”
The grass was wet with dew.
It clung to the fabric of Zoro’s pants, soaked into the back of his shirt, and painted a damp chill against his skin. He didn’t move at first, eyes closed, brow twitching faintly. Somewhere nearby, birds were calling. Not the shrill, high-pitched gulls that followed ships out at sea—songbirds. Local ones. Familiar.
His fingers flexed absently in the grass.
For a long moment, the world didn’t feel wrong. Just... quiet.
Then something itched at the edge of his awareness. A little too sharp. A little too crisp.
He cracked one eye open.
The sky overhead was pale with early light, clouds drifting slowly above the trees. The scent of sea salt still lingered, but it wasn’t heavy or cloying like on the Grand Line. It was clean. East Blue clean.
He blinked again. Groaned.
“…Did I pass out drinking again?”
He sat up slowly, spine cracking with the motion, and looked down at himself.
Then stilled.
His arms were bare. The thick band of scar tissue across his chest—gone. His torso looked like it hadn’t been carved open by death itself. His skin was unmarred, tan and smooth, like he hadn’t been through a hundred battles. His shoulders were leaner. His muscles still there, but compacted—lighter.
Too light.
The three swords beside him—his swords—rested in the grass.
All three.
Zoro reached out, fingers brushing over the hilt of Wado Ichimonji, then Sandai Kitetsu. Familiar. Steady. But—
His hand paused over the third.
Enma.
The grip of the blade pulsed faintly in his memory. It shouldn’t be here. It had only come to him after Wano. After years.
He frowned. Slowly picked it up. The weight was unmistakable.
Zoro stared at the sword, then let his gaze drift to his surroundings. Open field. Trees in the distance. Town not far off. Something about the skyline itched.
A beat.
Then he sighed through his nose.
“East Blue,” he muttered. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
He took stock. His gear was there—worn in, real, from the future. But the body he was in wasn’t. He flexed his arm, rotated a shoulder. The strength was still there, but it felt like someone had turned the dial back and left only the memory.
He brought his hand up to his face. Pressed gently over his left eye.
It opened.
He blinked once. A flat, unimpressed noise left his throat.
“...Well, that’s not right.”
Zoro stood, stretching until his back popped. Muscles pulled tight across a frame that was younger than it should’ve been. Lighter than he remembered. The weight distribution was off.
But he could work with this.
It wasn’t the strangest thing he’d ever woken up to. He’d once come to in a barrel floating in a volcano. This didn’t even crack top five.
He glanced down at the paper tucked into the side pocket of his coat. A scrap. Weathered but dry. Beside it, a pen. Everything about it felt like a nudge. A reminder.
Zoro scowled like it offended him.
But he picked it up anyway. Sat on a rock. Sighed.
Writing was still a pain in the ass.
The pen scratched unevenly against the paper. He didn’t bother with flourishes. Just the essentials.
Nami,
Pick me up. Something’s weird. Also, I have Enma.
Bring booze.
– Zoro
He folded the note, weighed it in his palm like it might argue with him, then tucked it into his belt.
She’d figure out how to find him. She always did.
He gave one last glance around—empty field, early sun, the beginning of something big—and slung his swords across his back.
This body would catch up eventually.
In the meantime, he’d make do.
The kitchen was quiet.
Not silent, exactly—there was the distant slap of waves against the dock, the creak of ropes, the faint hiss of oil cooling in a long-forgotten pan. But it was that particular kind of quiet that only ever happened before sunrise, when the world hadn’t quite made up its mind to start yet.
Sanji stood at the stove, ladle in hand, steam curling around his wrist as he stirred the soup simmering in front of him. The broth tasted a little too nostalgic. A little too... perfect.
The kitchen smelled like memory.
And that was the first thing that struck him as odd.
Not the soup. Not the pan. Not even the fact that the knives on the wall were arranged wrong. But the smell. That specific mix of flour, salt, and sea air, laced with just a hint of iron from the stove’s dented edge—too familiar.
His brow creased faintly as he reached for the pepper grinder. His movements were smooth, efficient. The body moved like it remembered what it was doing. Muscle memory lined up with action.
But something felt... off. Like wearing a perfectly tailored jacket a size too small.
His gaze drifted to his hands as he plated a slice of fresh bread and dropped it beside the soup. His fingers paused.
Too clean.
The scars along his knuckles—gone.
He tilted his hand in the warm kitchen light. The long-healed burn on his forearm? Missing. The tiny nick from a fight in Dressrosa? Not even a line.
Sanji stared for a moment, breath slow and even. Then turned away from the stove and walked to the nearest polished pan hanging on the wall.
He looked at his reflection.
Younger.
Sharper cheekbones, smooth skin, no stubble shadow. His hair—shorter, falling over his eyes in that same unkempt style he thought he’d left behind. Even the way he stood was different. His shoulders didn’t carry quite the same weight. Not yet.
He took the cigarette from behind his ear, rolled it between his fingers.
Didn’t light it.
Instead, he glanced to the door.
He already knew what was on the other side.
But when he stepped into the hallway, into the Baratie proper, it still knocked the breath sideways in his chest for just a second.
The sea. The dock. The smell of the old wood.
And out beyond the kitchen, through the bar’s wide front windows, he saw the silhouette moving across the deck—broad, gruff, familiar.
Zeff.
Still grumbling at the inventory like nothing was wrong.
Still on one leg.
Still alive.
Sanji leaned against the doorframe for a moment, arms crossed, one foot resting against the wood behind him. Just watching. Letting the wind pull at his shirt.
It had been years since he’d seen the old man alive like this. Not through a den-den call. Not in a memory. Not in a grave.
Just—here.
And yet Sanji’s pulse didn’t jump. His breath didn’t hitch.
Because of course Zeff was here.
This was the Baratie.
And something—something—had sent him back.
Sanji ran a hand through his hair, fingers brushing his forehead. Already felt like it was growing out too fast.
Great.
He didn’t panic. Didn’t shout.
Just turned back into the kitchen, calm and efficient, and opened the drawer where his knives were kept.
There they were. Arranged neatly. Gleaming. Stainless.
Too new.
Not his.
Sanji clicked his tongue and pulled the drawer shut. He turned to the line of knives hanging by the prep counter. Reached for the chef’s knife. Held it.
The weight was wrong.
The balance was wrong.
The feel of it in his grip—wrong.
He set it down slowly. Let the silence breathe.
Then, with that low, flat tone that usually preceded someone getting kicked through a wall, he muttered:
“…Who the hell touched my knives?”
Behind him, a voice grumbled from the hall.
“Still whining about the damn knives? You left them there last night, dumbass. If you didn’t like how they were sitting, maybe learn to clean up after yourself.”
Zeff.
Sanji didn’t turn.
Didn’t argue.
Just cracked the faintest grin at the drawer.
He reached up, took the cigarette from behind his ear again, and this time he lit it. The smoke curled softly as he leaned against the counter.
“Right,” he said, exhaling slowly. “Guess I must’ve forgotten.”
The first thing he noticed was the silence.
No humming engine under his spine. No hydraulic whirr when he stretched. No subtle shifting of metal plates under synthetic muscle.
Just the creak of an old mattress, the steady drip of water from somewhere in the rafters, and the groan of wood settling in humid heat.
Franky cracked one eye open.
Ceiling. Old beams. Plaster cracking in the corner. Sunlight bleeding in through the edges of a dusty window.
He blinked once. Slowly.
“…The hell?”
He sat up—and immediately knew something was wrong.
His back popped. Not in the familiar metal joint kind of way, but the flesh and cartilage kind of way. His shoulders ached, and not from overclocked hydraulic strain. From... sleeping weird.
He lifted his arms. Stared at them.
Skin.
Not metal. Not steel. Not a single panel.
Just bare, tan arms.
Too thin. Too soft. Too normal.
He flexed a hand, slowly, like it might fall off or start glowing.
Nothing.
Franky squinted at his palm. He could see his veins. And wrinkles.
And—“What the hell happened to my SUPER biceps?!”
The shout echoed off the walls, bounced through the old shipyard loft like a cannonblast. A pigeon somewhere above fluttered out through a broken pane.
Franky scrambled off the bed, bare feet slapping against the floorboards, half-limping toward the nearest mirror. It was cracked. Old. Half-covered in soot and ship grease. He didn’t care.
He leaned in. Hard.
His nose was still ridiculous. His chin still strong. His jawline—youthful, clean. No screws. No steel plating. No cybernetics or chrome. Just skin.
He peeled back the edge of his shirt. No iron abs. No titanium ribcage. No laser port.
Just stomach. Lean. Unscarred. Whole.
He ran a hand through his hair, heart thumping slow but heavy in his chest. The mirror stared back with a younger version of him. One he hadn’t seen in—
"Twenty years?” he muttered.
Then he paused. Blinked.
The mirror was... familiar.
So was the wall behind it. And the junk piled in the corner. And the engine schematics tacked up next to the window.
Franky turned his head.
He was in the old workshop.
The one he got before the sea train. Before the accident. Before Iceburg started wearing gloves and Franky started replacing body parts with steel plates.
He touched the wall gently, almost absentmindedly. Dust stuck to his fingers.
His voice, when it came again, was lower.
“…No. Way.”
He turned, scanned the room again. Everything in its place. Even the dent in the toolbox from when he’d dropped a wrench during a tantrum. His boots, old and cracked, sitting by the door like they’d never left.
He opened the chest beside the workbench.
Blueprints. Tools. Spare parts. A sketch of the Battle Frankies.
He stared for a long moment, then reached for one blueprint. Not the Battles. Not the failed weapons.
The Sunny.
The original sketch. Half-finished. Edges smudged from too many late nights.
He let out a breath.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
He wasn’t metal. Not yet. But everything else was real.
Franky sat down slowly at the bench, rubbed the back of his neck.
He hadn’t woken up in the past. He’d been put here. Dropped into his old body, sure—but his mind? That was still him. Shipwright of the Pirate King. Builder of the Thousand Sunny. Survivor of the New World.
Which meant one thing.
He looked at his arms again and flexed. They tensed, trembling with effort. Small. Soft.
“…Guess I’m gonna have to rebuild it all,” he muttered. “SUPER.”
The word didn’t have quite the same punch without forty pounds of chrome behind it, but he said it anyway.
Because some habits don’t die with steel.
He stood up, cracked his neck, and stretched.
First order of business? Check the docks.
Second? Make sure the Sunny was safe.
If his calculations were right—and Franky didn’t miscalculate when it came to ships—she had to be somewhere nearby. She was a part of him now, even if his arms didn’t say so.
And once he found her?
He’d get to work.
One bolt at a time.
The first ring came from the bottom of a sake bottle Zoro had repurposed as a Den Den Mushi holder. He blinked at it, unimpressed, one eye twitching as the snail wriggled and let out a sleepy "brrrriiiing."
He took a long sip of his drink before finally reaching over and flipping it open.
“Took you long enough,” he muttered.
Half a sea away, the Baratie kitchen was chaos.
Pots clanged. Someone was screaming about a missing onion. Another cook tried to quietly perform an exorcism with a salt shaker.
And over it all: “WHO TOUCHED MY DAMN SALT?!”
Sanji whipped around, eyes narrowing at the ringing Den Den on the counter, the snail letting out a lazy chirp like it was bored of waiting.
The chaos froze as he picked it up.
A sharp, “Oi.”
Then a grin.
“’Bout time.”
In Water 7, Franky shoved aside a tangle of wires and pulled open a drawer at his old workbench.
The Den Den Mushi blinked up at him, eyes swiveling.
He grabbed it without hesitation, brushing away dust with his thumb.
“Yo,” he said, voice steady. “You back too?”
A pause. Then a low chuckle.
“SUPER.”
On the Grand Line, in a gilded room that smelled faintly of spice and secrets, a Den Den Mushi lifted its head from the folds of a silk blanket.
Robin was already awake.
She sat beside the open window, a book resting on one knee, her eyes distant—not on the page, but on the horizon.
Her coat was draped neatly over the chair. A briefcase sat beside her, just barely cracked open. Inside, hidden beneath field sketches and coded notes, a single black envelope lay sealed no longer.
Her thumb brushed the edge of the parchment.
A name. A meeting place. A promise.
She closed the book softly.
Then, to the quiet room, she said:
“Baratie, in two months.”
No panic. No confusion.
Just the steady certainty of someone who had already started connecting the dots—
and intended to survive long enough to see it through.
Back in Foosha, Luffy pulled the last strap tight on his travel bag and set it on the floor by the door.
He wasn’t dressed in his usual bright red vest. Not yet. For now, it was a plain white shirt, worn open at the collar. His old boots, slightly too new. The hat rested on his back, tied loosely around his neck.
Makino leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, brow furrowed.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
Luffy paused. Glanced out the window toward the ocean.
The breeze had changed. He could feel it in his bones, in his skin.
Everything was starting again.
But they weren’t kids this time.
He smiled—wide and slow, full of old strength and fresh momentum.
“Guess we’re doing this all over again.”
Luffy stepped outside, the old wood of the bar’s porch creaking beneath his boots. The morning sun had fully cleared the horizon now, bathing the village in soft gold. Behind him, Makino stood in the doorway, arms crossed, still watching him like she wasn’t sure if she should hug him or drag him back inside and make him explain everything over tea.
He tilted his head back, closed his eyes for a second, and breathed in deep.
The wind smelled the same.
But everything else was already changing.
Across the seas, in quiet corners and busy ports, echoes of movement had begun. On a drifting ship in the Florian Triangle, a skeleton opened his eyes and began to hum. In Alabasta, a princess turned over in her bed, something tugging at the edge of a half-forgotten dream. In Sabaody, a coating technician checked his schedule and frowned—certain he’d seen that ship’s name before. In the calm depths off Fishman Island, a pod of whale sharks stirred as an old current shifted course.
The sea hadn’t said anything.
But it was listening.
And something was coming.