Luffy snuck out again. He knows that once Gramps found out, he would be in a world of hurt when he caught him. And he would catch him, eventually, but not as what he expects him to be. Hopefully. If this worked.
It was only determined by how long Ace and Sabo could stale him if they would anyway.
While his brothers were tolerant of his hobby they too share the viewpoint that Luffy’s interested in the human world was dangerous. It was hard to explain to other merfolk why humans fascinated Luffy so much, why someone that could make such interesting things, lived so differently and yet be eerily similar excited him.
He wasn’t just interested in humans, but the human’s world as well. It was an adventure, something so different, and he wanted to study them, wanted to be there more then he could ever explain.
Zoro was the only one he could talk to about his treasure trove, the one place he was free to be himself surrounded by things he liked, but even then Zoro mostly followed him because of their friendship and not his interest in humans.
If Luffy had been interested in whales, reefs hell even tides changes Zoro would be down to follow him and help him collect things as well. Sometime Luffy wished he could meet someone who got just as excited as he did when it came to studying humans.
Maybe someone would understand then, why he was going to go trade his tail for legs.
“Luffy, I know I’ve never said this before, but this is a terrible idea,” Zoro said swimming a little ways behind him. “It’s one thing to be interested in humans, another to want to be one! Especially for a man you just meet”
Luffy turns his head to look at his friend, for a moment watching the way color rippled across Zoro’s scales on his tail, knowing his own does that when near the ocean surface. In an hour, Luffy would never see it on himself again
“It’s not just for Torao” Though it was a really big part. “It’s for me. I want this. I don’t want to be trapped down here forever being told what I should enjoy and what I shouldn’t. I can’t. Not anymore.”
Not after Garp destroyed his heaven. His one place where Luffy felt not broken. It wasn’t just the loss of all his treasured who’s-it’s or thing-a-gics, but the idea that Gramps had found the place and ripped it apart, knowing it would devastate Luffy, and doing it for “His own good” anyway.
Hurting him, to force him to accept his grandfather’s way of thinking.
Ace and Sabo tried to comfort him about it, but they keep trying to get Luffy to understand Garp’s reasoning, hinting it was the best course of action. They didn’t understand just how deeply that hurt, how deeply their justification made him realize just how lowly they thought of his passion truly was.
“Luffy” Zoro sounded weary but acceptance had bled into his voice and he knows his best friend wouldn’t try to convince him to turn back now. After all, his fish friend had been the only one that saw Luffy break down when his cave was destroyed and had been the only one who didn’t discard his feelings about it.
“Just…be careful with the deal. You know what happened to the princess”
Luffy did. The legend meant to scare merchildren into never trading their legs away passed down for so many generations that her name had been lost to time, was why he thought up this plan. He didn’t let it derail him. She may have not been able to get the prince to fall for her, might not have been able to stab him and bath in his blood and she might have turned to foam in the end, but that didn’t mean Luffy would fail.
Even if he did, being bubbles would feel better then swimming the castle walls feeling like he was at the deepest part of the ocean as the pressure increased each day with more expectations of him outgrowing his “hobby” among the court.
Besides, the first little mermaid princess had fallen for a human prince, and she should have known as a royal how difficult it was to make marriages between nations work. Luffy fell for Torao, a mere human doctor that liked to go fishing, who lived a simple life near the beach.
He fell into the water one day when a storm blew him overboard and Luffy had been swimming by. The man had been just as intrigued by Luffy as he had, and though, it was a human wanting to know everything about merfolk not the other way around it was the closest thing he’s ever gotten to someone understanding.
Luffy knows he loves Law, and he is willing to leave behind everything he’s ever known for him. But for also himself. Because this is Luffy’s choice, and no one, is going to take that right away from him.
“I’ll try my best to bargain with the Witch into not taking my life” Luffy promises. Both ignore the fact he never said he would win the bargain. They both know what it would mean.
They finally arrived at where rumors claim the current Sea Witch lived. It was a downwards cave, nearly devoid of life par the active volcanos, letting out steams of heat.
Luffy didn’t hesitate to swim through them knowing one could erupt under him and cook him alive. Zoro followed at his own past, both being careful. There was a moment where Luffy had to throw the fish because one exploded but they eventually arrived at the entrance.
The Sea Witch stood there waiting for them, tentacles gently curling around him. Luffy had never seen merfolk with octopus tentacles before, everyone knows it was the symbol of a Witch. Witches weren’t allowed near the capital, and if they weren’t reportedly evil, Luffy would claim it was discrimination.
Instead, it was cations, everyone knows that if the royal family didn’t have the trident they would be overrun by the Witch’s magic years ago.
Still, despite the stories he heard of how hideous Witches were this man was rather attractive and he had a warm easy-going smile. Luffy knew he could trust him.
“Hello there,” The Sea Witch said casually having one of his tentacles bring up a bottle to his mouth at the same time he waved.
“Hi. Are you Shanks?” Luffy asked just to be sure. There was usually only one Sea Witch at one time but he could never be sure.
“I am. What does the youngest prince want with me?”
Luffy sucked in water, letting it swim in his chest and knowing that once this conversation was over it would cause pain instead of calming. Torao called it drowning, and apparently, it was a terrible way to go for humans.
Letting the water rush out of him, Luffy silently bid it and his mer-life goodbye as he let it go. Shanks watch him do so with a lazy smile.
“I want you to make me a human”
Shanks’ smile got bigger, turning just a bit dark. “That kind of request comes with a heavy price little prince”
“You’re a bit young for me to be doing that kind of magic on”
“Prove it” Shanks dares. Luffy is prepared to do so. He feels Zoro gills go rigid but he doesn’t stop him when the dagger rushed into his face. Biting his lip, the merprince allows the blood to flow in the water around him. He tries not to show how much it hurt-
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING YOU, IDIOT!?” Shanks burst sounding horrified and angry “WHY DID YOU JUST STAB YOURSELF?”
“T-t-to prove I’m strong” Luffy gathers all his seventeen years of dealing with Ace’s comments of being a crybaby to stop himself from crying. “T-t-to prove I can-can do this”
Shanks doesn’t seem to like that. “ARE YOU INSANE!?”
In the end, Luffy is rushed to the surface by a worried Zoro, water feeling his lungs like sharp little daggers with a pair of legs and a bandage on his face. Shanks’ straw hat sitting on his head a promise to give it back when Luffy is about to die as the bargain.
All he has to do is live a good life as free as possible. One with Taroa, where he is free to like what he does and be himself.
Luffy doesn’t care what anyone says, Shanks is a good guy and his new hero, Sea Witch and all.
Bonus: After Luffy left Shanks is talking to Benn
“And then he just stabs himself! In the face, with a human fishing knife!”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have dared him to prove himself.”
“I meant to prove his resolve with words, to convince me, not stab himself! Who does that!?”
“Shanks a day ago you stuck your head into a volcano to get back a bottle of rum that a human ship dropped.”
“That’s different. It was alcohol. I wasn’t trying to prove anything, I was trying to get drunk. This kid is insane.”
“That’s why you like him and gave him Roger’s hat?”
A wistful smile as Shanks remembers the first merman to ever treat him like anyone instead of a danger else springs to his mind. He could have sworn the same merman was standing before him, staring at him from a younger face when the little prince arrived. Maybe he was.
