[OPFS] [ARC-01-LOUGETOWN] Chapter : 01 (Patreon)

I slowly tried to open my eyes to the sound of an alarm clock, vaguely remembering that the sound was different from the usual tone from my smartphone, and slowly my senses were getting back to me as I woke up to feel that the bed was feeling strange, like it had become harder during the night. I tried to reach for my phone to shut the alarm off, knowing that I had another one set for half an hour later as usual. The key word here is "tried," because I couldn't feel my phone and instead felt like my finger had been pinballed between two hard objects, which jolted me awake from my laziness-induced sleep.

"Aaarrggh fuck! As I awoke, I groaned and looked at the 'phone', which was causing pain to my finger, and was astounded to discover that it wasn't my phone but an alarm clock that looked like it was from an old 1900s movie, displaying the time as six o'clock in the morning. I got out of bed and suddenly felt something different that could not be ignored.

The thing was, my feet were not touching the ground as I sat at the edge of the bed, as they usually do. Then I looked around the room to find that it was not my room. Being the twenty-one-year-old male that I am, I quickly looked around to see anything peculiar to find out what was going on. The only things that I found in the room were a mirror and a closed wardrobe to my right. There was something else—or should I say a dress? I recognized the dress as the marine uniform from one piece, and that design was their insignia.

Now I have read a lot of fanfics, and there are a lot with crazy storylines. Being the avid reader that I was, I quickly came to the conclusion that I was in one piece. At first, I was happy that I got to live in my favorite anime, but that lasted for around one minute, then the pessimistic side of my mind made an entry and made me think, 'What would happen to my family now that I'm not with them?'

After a lot of brainstorming, I concluded that I should first confirm that I was really in one piece, and with that in mind, I looked at myself, seeing different clothes on me. Usually, I slept in my boxers. On me were typical nightwear: a loose cotton shirt and loose night pants. Accepting the clothes, I went to look around the house, or whatever it was I was in, to find that I was in a house with two bedrooms, a living room, two bathrooms, and a kitchen.

The most intriguing and shocking information I gleaned from my search was that I was 5'5 ft tall and that the face that looked back at me in the mirror of the bedroom was not mine. The face had black straight hair, blue eyes, and peach-colored skin and looked to be a child's face, fifteen or sixteen years old.

After panicking for about two minutes and then sucking it up, I got back to the work of confirming my hypothesis that this was the one piece world. Not caring for the attire I was in, I got out of the house to see that it was an apartment, opened the door, and looked down to see that I was about thirty feet above the ground. I saw the thing that proved my hypothesis and made my otaku side do a celebration dance.

It was the tallest building I could see, with the same logo as on the marine uniform painted on its outer wall and the word "Navy" written in English on it. That was the last straw, and I just screamed jubilantly to the heavens, "Woooohhhoooohhhh."

After that screaming episode, for which some of the people who were up at that ungodly hour just looked at me with weird expressions, I just went back to the apartment and closed my door. Then, after a victory dance, I was exhausted, which took me about five minutes. I sat down on the sofa and thought about what to do and what had happened to the real me, among other questions. After thinking for about five minutes, all I came up with was a blank.

The last memory I have is that I was searching for good fanfic to read, and after no success in finding the one that interested me, I went to sleep at about 2:30 in the night. That was all I could remember. Nothing after that, just memories of waking up to a different alarm this morning.

As I was thinking about what had happened and coming up with strange conclusions about being dead of food poisoning, there was no other option as I lived in a peaceful area, so no mugging and all.

Suddenly, there was a sound of "Puru puru puru.." coming from the stand beside me. Seeing that it was a Denden mushi and berating myself for missing that on my previous check of the room, I thought about answering it and coming up with all the scenarios, like someone who knows the kid I was transmigrated to might be calling and all that. Then I just thought, "Fuck it!" and answered it by lifting the mouthpiece toward me.

There was a long pause after I picked it up. There was a bored expression on the snail's face, as if it didn't care. Then, after what felt like an hour but was in fact just five minutes, there was a masculine voice saying, "*****, you have wasted five minutes of the ten minutes that were given for your answers."

Just as I heard my original name, I became shocked and couldn't form any words in my mouth. After some seconds, I got my senses back and asked tentatively, "Why am I here?"

"No special reason; I just thought you were so interested in reading all the OC fics, so I just sent you there," said the voice.

"What happened to the real me?"

"Nothing; he is in a deep sleep," came the response.

"How long does it take for me to go back?"

"As long as you live here," the reply was as emotionless as it had been from the beginning.

"What happens to me after I go back?"

The voice said, "Nothing; you will just wake up the next morning as if nothing has happened, just with the memories of here."

"What is the story of this boy?"

"All the things you need to know about yourself can be found in the apartment," came the answer, with some amusement at the part where he said "yourself."

"What am I supposed to do here?"

"Anything you want to do, now the time is up." "This is the last call you will get from me before you go back to your real world." Again, there was amusement in his voice when he said "real world."

Then I just sat there, contemplating what had just happened. During the conversation, I stood up involuntarily. I was breathing heavily, now that I noticed.

After thinking of what to do from there, I came to the conclusion that I was going to enjoy myself here and have enough adventures for a lifetime. But first, I need to know about the kid I am with. I remembered that I had to search the apartment to find out. I got up and looked in every part of the house but came up with nothing after half an hour of searching.

Getting back to the couch after the search, I looked to the shelf to see a book under it that looked like a diary. I then facepalmed myself for not seeing it before and immediately looked through the book.

Indeed, it was a diary. It belonged to the kid's father, who was a marine. After reading through the whole diary, I came up with some points.

Logan is the name of the child, or my name now. (From now on, I will refer to Logan as myself.) I was adopted by my father, who was a marine, He found me on the docks of the town as a baby while patrolling. He was forty years old when he found me, and his wife had died eight months earlier.

From then on, he took me in and adopted me. The rest is normal, and his father's name is Gennou. He died a year ago today. The island on which I am now is called Lougetown. All the other details are normal and nothing important, like how I was trained by Gennou in physical exercises and some martial arts—nothing too flashy, just some self-defense, and the names of some neighbors. And the timeline was around sixteen years after Roger's execution.

It was good that he didn't write on a day-to-day basis, just important ones, and after that, it was my perspective in the diary as the kid continued it after his father's death.

Gennou died of some unknown disease that he caught on his previous mission on the Grand Line. Before dying, he held the rank of sergeant major, and because of the disease, he retired from the navy.

There were also things about how Logan wanted to become a Marine, like his father. How it was his dream, how he was working as a chore boy in the navy base there, and all that stuff.

Now that he had all the information, he relaxed and thought about what to do next. And suddenly, it happened. There was severe pain in my head, and it felt like someone was drilling a hole through it. I was screaming at the top of my lungs, and after the pain became unbearable, I collapsed.

Slowly, I opened my eyes. The pain in my head was gone, and I tried to remember what triggered it. That's when I found all the memories of Logan flooding into my brain like images before my eyes.

Everything that he could remember was only a small part of his life, as memories get forgotten over time. But all the important ones were shown to me, like videos, and then it all stopped until just before the scene where he went to bed last night.

It all took me an hour to sort out what happened and which emotions were the kids' and which were mine, and at last, it was somewhat acceptable at the moment. As he was a child and I am an adult, all the conflicting perspectives were sorted out.

Then came the important question, "What to do now?"

I could become a pirate and try to live freely, or even join Luffy and the Strawhats and have glorious adventures. Or I could become a Marine and go up through the ranks and become strong.

Those were the only two choices. I'm thinking about becoming a marine or a strawhat. Becoming a bounty hunter was also a good option, as it is neutral. I can become one at any point, but there was a catch: there was no supervised training or help. There's no need to think too much about it.

After ten minutes of thinking, I concluded by remembering the marines that the kid had met and all other perspectives.

If I become a pirate, then the choice of becoming a marine gets closed off. But if I become a Marine, then going rouge is easy if I don't like it. It's not like they have cameras here to detect rogue marines.

So in the end, I wanted to become strong, like Garp, so that I could do as I liked and not think of what others might get offended by. I also didn't want to be a criminal like someone who goes pillaging, so the decision was easy for me. I would become a marine, which I already was, and try to climb the ranks as fast as possible, do some good in this world, and get some girls.

Hey, a guy can dream, you know.

If climbing the ranks quickly becomes difficult or time-consuming, I can always say, "It's a pirate's life for me, mate," and jump ship.

So with that decision, I remembered that I have a job as a chore boy, and it starts in half an hour. With that in mind, I went to freshen up and remembered that I have six years till the canon starts, and I decided that if I couldn't become Rear Admiral by the time of the Marineford War, then I was going rogue. I decided to wait until the war because I didn't want to change the canon too much before it.

Now, looking into the mirror naked, I can see the muscle outline that is forming on my sixteen-year-old body and a budding six-pack. I was amazed to see a six-pack on a sixteen-year-old. I was doing some poses, and then I remembered the strength of the inhuman Zoro. Then came another ambition: to be as physically strong as Zoro and a good swordsman.

I always liked swords, and using dual swords was my favorite. As an intermediate goal, I want to be a swordsman without a devil fruit, and my ultimate goal is to be as powerful as Garp. I set foot outside my apartment and started jogging, as there were only five minutes left to report to the base.