"Oh. It's you."

Smoker didn't know if it was banter or not at this point, but he only smirked back at the old man running the bar. "Good to see you too, old timer."

"I won't serve you," he spat, grumbling with a newspaper in his hands, though a slight smile tugged at his lips. "I swear, first you all force me to change the name of my bar. And then you go and capture every good pirate out there."

Smoker chuckled darkly. "The only good pirate is a dead one."

The old man flipped him off.

The marine laughed. "C'mon. We keep you all safe," Smoker chuckled, reaching out with his smoke and grabbing one of the bottles from the rack behind the man. It looked a little emptier than before, the marine's eyes gravitating to the empty glasses to the side of the bar.

There was still some liquid on the bottom of the mugs.

Smoker placed his payment on the table and shot an accusatory look at the man. "You got customers?"

The old timer smirked widely, not looking away from the paper. "I didn't know it was illegal for a bar to sell drinks."

Smoker sighed, taking a slow sip of the bottle he'd liberated from the wall. "Pirates?"

"Good ones," the wrinkled man wheezed with a laugh. "Better go raid the cemetery."

Smoker growled gently. "Don't make my job harder, old timer. Tell me."

"No, I don't think I will," the man snarked, grabbing a bottle of his own and taking a sip. "You should go ask my doctor; you see, my memory is fading in my advanced age."

Smoker shook his head, huffing a lungful of smoke.

"You know, ya toddler," the old owner hissed, glaring at the marine captain with the corners of his eye, "your kind think you ended Roger with his execution. You didn't. You couldn't." he placed his bottle down, and turned to glare right into Smoker's eyes. "Even if he hadn't said what he did. Even after you murdered everyone that might be related to him by blood, men like him will continue to be born."

Smoker growled softly, rubbing his temples. "There you go again…"

The old man smiled widely at the pain of the marine. "You know it as much as I do. You know why he smiled on that platform all that time ago."

"No, I don't." Smoker growled. "No sane person would do that."

The old man laughed and turned back to his paper. "Oh… so that's where I remember that hat from…"

Smoker's eyes twitched, and he jolted to his feet, the stool falling to the floor from the sudden motion. "He was here?"

He didn't give the old man time to bluster, already walking off as his smoke lifted the stool right-side up, pulling a baby den-den mushi out of his pocket.

"Look everywhere for the straw hat, not the pirate. He's already in town; he must be under a disguise," he ordered into his communications, his men barking back their confirmations.

"Captain!" one of his men barked back. "We've seen the straw hat in the town square, but it's not a man wearing it."

Smoker grumbled. "I'll come to check myself; everyone else, keep an eye out."

"Is that… Luffy?"

Buggy's eyes bulged out of his face. He saw the man he'd started to call captain looking down from the platform, laughing like a madman.

"Wait, wha—who's that?" Usopp asked, squinting a little before someone jumped from the building behind the platform, landing stockade-first on top of Luffy.

The old clown felt dread rise in his chest, which felt closer than it had in many days. A wheeze hissed past his lips as history slowly repeated itself in front of him.

"No!" He barked, pushing himself out of the bag with force he didn't know he still had, taking only a moment to register that he was finally back in range of his body, the rest of his body appearing from elsewhere in the crowd, joining his head in its path to try and stop his own men from killing his new captain.

"Dammit, Cabaji, sto—!"

His voice was drowned out by a righteous peak of thunder as lightning struck the platform.

The heavens were ruthless; the immense electrical charge shot down with ludicrous power, and the mere second it struck seemed to stretch into eternity.

Nami was sure some of that same ionizing destructive power that had blinded the entire population in the town square had arced into her; her heart had stopped dead in her chest.

"No…"

Her chest ached around the unmoving muscle, her brain still trying to process what she'd lost in a single moment, the ghostly spots left behind from the lightning in her eyes stinging harshly.

Nami was still holding onto Robin's coat, begging her to do something to save their captain, to save the man who seemed eerily too content with being beheaded. He'd accepted his fate too fast. It both horrified and angered her to think that he'd just leave her. Like her mother ha-

Tears started falling from her eyes; her heart painfully beating once more as time finally started moving again. Her legs gave out from under her as the old platform caught fire, still crackling with the rage of the heavens itself, the angry electric current buzzing and arcing along the metal structure, the bolts holding it in place flying from their housing as if possessed. The massive steel structure joined her in her fall soon after. She never hit the ground; Robin's arms wrapped tightly around her and barely kept her on her feet.

No such support was given to the monument to now two historic men; it fell to the hard ground with a deafening shriek of bent metal. She imagined it was mourning the Late and Future Kings.

The clouds above began to cry, raindrops washing over the entire plaza, slowly putting out the small blaze that the lightning had lit.

"L-Luffy…" she breathed out, trying to push out of Robin's arms. "H-he might be hu-"

Robin hugged her harder against her chest. Nami looked up at her in a sudden burst of rage, venom on the tip of her tongue for her inaction; how all of this could've been avoided if only she had mov-

Her rage died in her throat, shame taking its spot as she looked at the older woman. It was the very same look of loss she had seen reflected in Nojiko's eyes all those years ago, the face she'd made when her mother had been taken—just as cruelly as Luffy had been. Nami had a feeling this wasn't the first time Robin had made such a face, either. Silent tears were shed under the cover of the straw hat still on the archeologist's head.

Nami choked out a sob, hugging the older woman tightly. "W-we need to get h-"

Her desperate words, the hiss of the dying fire, the panicked gasps of people behind them, and every other single source of sound were all cut off by a monstrous roar that shook the very bedrock of the town they were in. Nami and Robin flinched against each other, an instinctual urge pushing them both to tighten their arms around themselves as the roar echoed off the buildings around them. Even the downpour of rain grew muted as if afraid of the source. Her brain blared to try and recognize it, put a label on it to understand and quantify it, but it simply couldn't.

It wasn't something that should be described, let alone heard. Her senses ached more and more as the echo continued in the silent square, additional questions forming each time the sound bounced off another building. It was echoing unnaturally, not fading as it should.

It was utterly wrong.

"Captain?" Robin gasped, managing to speak again, her voice breaching over the impossible echo and overpowering it. Nami remembered to breathe, inhaling harshly with a gasp to fill her empty lungs. Slowly, she turned to look up at Robin before turning around to see what had given the archeologist the hope to talk over the horrific melody.

Her eyes widened at the sight in front of her. The charred wreckage of the platform was shifting.

Something shot out from it, and the young navigator could only imagine it as a hand, but it was wrong. It looked undead, yet overflowing with life. It was something that shouldn't be moving, yet it was with incredible power and effort. A paradox of flesh. Something that shouldn't be on the same plane as the rest of them.

The limb extended out from the shadows under the collapsed platform, its form shifting with loud cracks and pops of bone and cartilage, mutilating itself with each motion in ways no flesh and bone creature should, its skin shedding and cracking, bleeding with each twitch. Bone and sinew shifted visibly underneath the eternally shredding skin, many human and inhuman eyes forming under the shifting bones and muscles, glaring out from tears on the patchwork of flesh. Tumorous growths bulged and shifted along the limb without rhyme or reason, shredding the ruined flesh even further as the sick mockery of life extended out from the shadows.

Her stomach felt too full at the sight, a dry heave escaping her lips.

Suddenly with purpose, it moved with a jerk. The sounds of shattering bone crackled like the embers of a fire as the thing latched onto the charged steel of the platform, with a hand that had teeth and too many fingers. The visible leftovers of the lightning still arcing on the girder transferred onto the thing that shouldn't be real, as if nature itself was trying to kill the foreign invader. The thing was undeterred, its grip tightening enough to crunch into the steel before it heaved, the limb bulging grotesquely as it tossed the massive girder to the side. The steel beam bounced off a nearby building with a heavy crack that seemed to bring sound back to the scene, the pitter-patter of rain slowly growing louder, drowning out what it could.

The monstrosity got to its feet, Luffy's clothes barely containing the constantly malforming mass of flesh, tendrils of muscle slithering in and out of its form like angry eels, its limbs changing shape with painful jerks and cracks, splitting and forming new ones that fused back into its body the joints shifting up and down along the bones impossibly. It was a scribble given flesh in the most monstrous way, given shape in a reality that never wanted it to exist. It groaned with rage, fighting against the laws of nature trying to apply themselves over it, somehow overcoming them all as it continued shedding singed skin in a pile around itself, eyes growing in places they should never be in, blinking into reality and out all over the sparking mass of fluctuating flesh.

The only thing Nami could think about what she was seeing was one of the books she'd read, about sea creatures that went beyond the meager scope of human existence, of creatures that swam even deeper than the fishmen dared to. Of creatures that would see humans like humans saw ants. Of beings that couldn't be comprehended, existences that could drive people to madness by their sight alone.

The tendrils swaying in and out of its form expanded out of its body suddenly, flailing around before they speared down and dug into the ground; the static charge still sparking over its body surged down the new path into the ground, burning the new limbs off in the process. Finally, the many eyes it had rolled back and deformed back into the ether.

The thrashing of muscles ceased, and the rapid shifting of mass and shape started to stabilize. The thing took a deep breath that was too big for its own chest, its body bulging painfully with cracks of ribs before it compressed back down, his flaking skin starting to regrow and gain a tan-

"Luffy!?"

Nami couldn't believe she had barked his name out like that. She had not realized that it must've been her captain the entire time, her brain unable to process anything but the horror given flesh she'd been watching.

The idiot smiled, dusting what little remained of Robin's cloak off his body. "Sorry, Robin! Looks like your cloak burnt up!"

Nami had to hold onto Robin this time, the older woman almost falling on her ass. "I-it appears so, captain…" she breathed out, her voice cracking mid-way through.

Nami did not blame her at all, still surprised that she herself was still standing against all odds. She blinked, rapidly forgetting the details of what she'd just witnessed, her brain trying to erase everything in an attempt to preserve her sanity.

"Y-you could do that this entire time?" the Navigator asked, still a little too worried that this wasn't the idiot that had saved her village but something wearing his skin.

"Do what?" he asked back, tilting his head like a confused puppy. The contrast between what she'd seen and what he was doing was in the process of driving her mad. "Dunno what you're talking about, but that hurt like hell. Am I still alive?"

"Captain!" Buggy's head cheered as he slammed squarely onto Luffy's chest, the rest of his body following suit in a pile of body chunks. Their captain wheezed at the sudden tackle, his newly reformed lungs immediately stress-tested.

"You're alive!"

"Hehe, looks like it, right?" Luffy chuckled, looking around curiously, before kicking the girder to his left. "Aww man, Roger's platform broke…."

"Ah! My love!" The woman Nami still didn't recognize slid forward, shoving Buggy's head to the side. "Do you recognize me now?"

Luffy scanned her up and down, expression fully lost, looking over her shoulder to Nami as if she held the answers. She didn't—and didn't know why he thought she would—shook her head as her brain gave up on understanding anything until they returned to the Merry.

"You were the first man to strike me…" the woman continued, rubbing over her stomach with a moan that sounded way too genuine and sensual. "It really hurt, you know~"

Luffy looked somewhere between intrigued and disgusted. Nami really had to get him out of there before things got worse.

Robin blinked, laughing softly, madly. "It appears that I've zoned out a second… just what is going on right now?"

Usopp came next to the scene, panting and sweating as he bent double next to Nami. He looked like he was coming from a deluge instead of the light rain washing over everyone. "Did— was— is that Luffy?" he panted, one hand in his messenger bag, his eyes locked onto their supposed captain.

Nami nodded slowly. "We're pretty sure. And now he's getting hit on," she gestured at the woman still struggling to goad the man's memories, Buggy squawking in the man's other hand. "Wait, is that the rest of Buggy's body?"

The three blinked, watching the various body parts swirl next to the head shouting at their captain for being part of such a dangerous situation, while the mystery woman kept trying to rub up against Luffy's body.

"...After the thing Luffy did, that kinda feels mundane." Usopp whimpered, letting go of his sling and wiping his forehead. "You know?"

That's when the Marines circling the plaza made themselves known.

"Surround the plaza! Arrest all the pirates!"

"Ah. That might pose a problem." Robin mused. Nami turned to respond, only to get cut off by Luffy's arm wrapped around her waist.

She blinked owlishly as she realized that he'd picked her up under his arm like luggage, his other arm —now a squid tentacle, something at least more comprehensible than that horror from before—wrapped around Robin and Usopp and stretched further, lifting them all off the ground.

Nami blinked and looked up at Luffy. "Uh…?"

"Let's run!" he cheered. Nami was finally certain the thing manhandling her was her idiot.

Smoker blinked again, pulling another deep inhale from his cigars to try and settle his nerves down. "Devil Fruit," he breathed with a cloud of smoke, his hand shakily going back to grip the handle of his jitte. "It's just another Devil Fruit like any other," he repeated, for both himself and his men.

"We've been trained for this, men! Use the nets!" he commanded, pointing his jitte towards the plaza. "Surround and capture them all!"

He held his position for a while, still thinking about what he'd seen before the terror. Why did he smile… did he know that lightning was going to strike…? He shook his head, knowing that was impossible.

Then again… so is whatever that was… Smoker thought, the sight of Luffy's reanimated flesh haunting his thoughts.

He barely registered that the monster in the skin of a human had blinked next to the straw-hat-wearing woman, his form molting once more to gain a long aquatic tentacle that wrapped around multiple people and hefted them up with ease.

This time, it didn't even register as disturbing, his eyes rapidly scanning all the escape routes they could take, his body billowing in smoke as his form started to dissipate. Straw Hat wasn't the only one with a Devil fruit in this town.

He's too dangerous; I can't let him escape. And I'll be damned if I still don't owe him that drink…

Smoke spread out then coalesced, spearing through the rain-soaked skies like an arrow loosed from a bow.

Dragon was still reeling from what he'd seen. He'd not planned any of what had happened, let alone what Luffy had done.

"...so that is your answer…" he hummed, rubbing a hand over his face.

Luffy's feet screeched to a halt, tossing his passengers ahead through the mist before him, ominous and intelligent in a way it shouldn't be. He heard Nami call out for him, Usopp whimpering after possibly falling face-first onto the ground.

"You all head to the Merry, I'll handle this," he called out, glaring at the floating hand he'd noticed in the mist, holding a weird two-pronged baton. Soon enough the rest of the Marine materialized, glaring back at him. "Devil Fruit?" he asked, smirking and cracking his knuckles.

The marine puffed smoke from his mouth, and the cigars gripped between his teeth glowed on the tips as their embers were stoked. "Looks like I'm not the only one here today."

"Fourth or fifth I've seen so far," Luffy mumbled, rubbing his chin. "You can turn into smoke? That's neat!"

The marine huffed again, pointing his weapon at Luffy. "I'll be taking you in, in the name of the World Government."

"Nuh-uh."

Luffy smirked as that seemed to tick the marine off. The man suddenly lunged at him with the odd baton extended. His arm rapidly turned into his Ironclad gauntlet, the hardened chitin blocking the metal staff for a moment before he felt his body start to lose strength again.

"Mystery-stone…" he groaned, barely pulling himself away from the weapon with a huff, shaking his transformed hand in an effort to get the feeling back to it.

"Sea Prism Stone," the marine corrected, smoke billowing from his form, wrapping around the two and caging Luffy into the fight. "You can't defeat me, Straw Hat!"

"I don't even have that on!" Luffy whined as he shook off the last of the effects of the prism, rolling his shoulders. "Wonder if that would work on you too."

The marine grumbled, "It won't go that way, fool." He grinned around his cigars. "I'll capture you, and then we'll toast over your dispatch of Nezumi before I chuck you in a Sea Prism cell."

"Who?" Luffy asked, not waiting for a response before he rushed forward, aiming a haymaker at the marine's stomach. His fist hit the target, but there was no impact, his fist bursting through the marine's chest without resistance. Luffy stumbled and fell ass over teakettle as he couldn't correct his momentum.

The young captain barely managed to roll out of the way as the baton slammed into the ground where his head had just been, cracking the stones. "You're fast," he gasped, slowly realizing that the smoke surrounding them was starting to strain his air supply.

"You've never faced a Logia before, have you?" the Marine asked, glaring with humor in his eyes. "I don't turn into smoke. I am smoke. No matter how fast you are, you're not going to hit me."

Luffy got to his feet with a cough, attempting to turn his skin semipermeable to get more oxygen in. His attempt only hurt him more, a hiss escaping his lips. "Aw man, the frog skin didn't work…" Luffy coughed, his skin still stinging from the smoke. "That's not fair."

"You're a pirate; what do you know about 'fair'?" Smoker grumbled. "...wait, frog skin?"

Luffy smiled. "You're right."

He spread his legs to his sides, placing a fist on the ground as he let his body start to transform. The nerves in his legs dulled, his boots grew up his legs, the chitinous surface overtaking his skin. He grinned wider as the exoskeleton grew thicker around his knees and the middle of his thighs before they split with a loud crack, new joints forming and replacing his human ones. His shifting exoskeleton grew further until the separated structures intertwined against each other at his joints, forming a set of grooves and spines.

"Did you know Leafhoppers have organic gears?" He giggled as his nerves started working again, the sensation of meshing chitin still ticklish.

The marine couldn't take his eyes away from the sight of Luffy's lower body assuming the form of a hybrid Leaf-hopper. "What?"

"I'm saying bugs are cool, Smokey."

Smokey shook his head and scowled. "That's not my name, it's Smoker."

Luffy blinked. "That's what I said?"

Smoker growled and went in for another attack, Luffy jumping onto the building to their side, then to the other side, scaling his way above the smoke tornado that had covered them. He took in a gasping breath above the suffocating cloud, blocking a fist that struck him right in his stomach.

"You're not getting away!" Smoker repeated, his fist gripping onto his vest and tossing him back into the cloud that had surrounded them.

But he was too late. Luffy had seen it. Merry had its sails rigged already; he just needed to get some distance from the Marine Captain.

He grinned and stared at the modified baton still floating in the hands of the marine. "You can't turn that into smoke, can you?"

"Did the lightning strike you in the head?" the Marine grumbled, his floating head and arms slowly waving around with the smoke. "We'll get you checked out with our doctors, don't worry."

Luffy smirked and shot out from his spot again, bouncing from wall to wall faster and faster, not even knowing where he was going himself, only watching for the baton rapidly moving in the smoke, trying to hit him.

Smoker growled, his smoke wrapping around the man in an effort to slow him down and hold him steady. He found himself struggling even as more smoke tendrils that could hold down seven pirates each wrapped around Luffy, stacking on top of each other with little to show for it.

Then, he felt something wrap around his hand.

His eyes bulged as he caught sight of the giant insectoid gauntlet that Luffy's hand had wrapped around his own, squeezing hard. He winced, still gripping onto his jitte, fighting his body's reflex against turning into smoke. If he let go of the weapon, he could only imagine the damage the pirate could cause.

His other hand materialized over Luffy's head, punching him harshly, his reforming legs kicking at the man's arm, trying to get his grip to loosen.

But Luffy was more hard-headed than Smoker had imagined. Not even groans escaped his lips as the marine assaulted his body in an attempt to retrieve his weapon, finally giving an annoyed grunt before his whole body pulsed and shifted, his insectoid gauntlet spreading down his arm and to the rest of his body.

Before the Marine's eyes, the pirate gained a new form, the lean body slowly turning more muscular and broad as the skin frayed off once more, the white chitinous body of a brutish insect-man greeting the smokey, rainy skies.

Smoker blinked. He'd fallen into the trained responses to be used against Devil Fruit users; first ascertain what type they were, then go from there. He'd seen what Luffy was capable of at the platform, but when their battle had started and Smoker started really paying attention, he'd marked him as an Insect Zoan.

Leaf-hopper type, from how Luffy talked about them.

But now, his brain blared out an error as it recognized the pirate's new form as a beetle, something that shouldn't have been possible; a Zoan with multiple animals wasn't possible. His reeling thoughts were pulled back when Luffy started to apply even more pressure to his hand, gripped in his—now massive—fist, the pain kicking the Marine into gear. Smoker fearlessly punched the transformed pirate again, this time getting only more pain in return, his hand dispelling against the exoskeleton of his opponent as the pain in his knuckles triggered his reflex.

Punching Luffy felt more like punching steel, the grizzled marine realized with a wince.

The bug turned up at him and smirked—somehow without a mouth. "Got your little stick!" the Bugman cheered, waving the jitte around along Smoker's hand, which was still gripping it.

"Dammit…" Smoker grumbled, still trying to use his smoke to overpower Luffy. But, impossibly, the Bugman disappeared from his sight.

A moment later Smoker found him again, he found his jitte too, the sleek metal bumping him on his temple. As the poke registered, he felt himself lose his control over his body, all of his limbs suddenly turning back into smoke and recombining under his neck, suddenly leaving him flesh and blood once more.

His eyes widened, realizing that his forceful ejection of smoke-state had caused him to release his death-grip on the jitte. "Ah." Luffy's fist aimed at his stomach again, and this time, the strike hit true, knocking the breath out of him.

"Dammit…"

He kneeled over, out of breath but not options, as he started to turn into smoke again, but his attempts at a counterattack were foiled before they even began as Luffy stabbed the jitte into the pavement at an angle, the pole pinning him down on the ground.

"Now sit tight there, marine man. I gotta get to the Grand Line!"

"Wait…" he wheezed, watching the man shift back into his human form and run out of the town. His head hit the pavement, and he weakly tried to push his body to get the jitte loose from its speared location, failing miserably.

On that day, Captain Smoker had his first failure to capture a pirate crew headed to the Grand Line.

It had taken Dragon longer than he would like to admit to shake off the shock from seeing his son get electrocuted and then revive as an eldritch mass of undead flesh.

But he couldn't keep himself away, rushing to save Luffy from the clutches of the smoke Logia that had kept his iron grip on the ports of Loguetown.

He'd been sorely mistaken in his assumptions, encountering the running form of Luffy nearly crashing into him as he took a corner.

Both stared at each other for a moment, Luffy's eyes squinting at him. "...nice cloak."

"Helps with the changing winds." Dragon hummed, scanning his son up and down. The youth not reacting to the growing deluge starting to soak down to his bones. "The world is waiting for our answer."

Luffy scrunched his face, causing Dragon to chuckle softly. It figured his son had no idea what he was referring to, but he thought it would be apt to seed the thought in his head.

"Ok… but where did you get it?"

That tossed Dragon into a tailspin. "Excuse me?"

"The cloak, where did you get it? I need one for my archeologist."

Dragon blinked widely, face hidden in the shadows. "For your archeologist?"

Luffy nodded before fixing his hair that was starting to get stuck to his head from the rain. "She had lent it to me, but it got burnt off and…" he paused, realizing that he was wasting time. "Ah shit, I got a ship to catch," the younger man mumbled before rushing past the father he didn't know. "Have a nice day, Cloaky!"

Dragon turned to glance at his back, before smirking to himself. "A pirate, huh? That works too."