Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Here’s how it goes: when Kuina is ten years old, she slips in the rain and smashes her head on the stairs.

She’s rushing down the steps when her foot comes out from under her. She screams (of course she screams), tries to catch herself, fails. Her head hits stone and everything goes dark before she can feel the pain.

Here’s what her father finds, rushing out into the rain to investigate: his daughter, curled at the bottom of the stairs, so still and so so small and soaked through with rain. The puddles at the bottom red with upturned mud and blood. Blood on the stops that washes away quickly, as if she hadn’t landed at the bottom at first.

Dead, the doctor says, face tight and grim, kneeling in the puddle on the grass. He pulls the shroud up and over her, picks her up and brings her inside, and her father’s last view of his daughter is her tiny head haloed by hair and blood and rainwater, split open at the seams like a bloated fish.

They hold the wake in the courtyard. He lays his daughter out on the ground, and the divots in the floor stop it from flooding but the stone is still wet. He tucks the shroud in as if she’s asleep, holds the umbrella over her as if it will keep her warm, leans down and presses a kiss to her forehead through the shroud. She’s still warm, for now.

The other students come through the night. The rain lightens up, and they leave the offerings by her face under the umbrella. Her sword lays on the stone and she will never learn to use a second, he realizes, and the realization crushes him under its weight. He keeps the candles lit, keeps his back bent over her to keep the rain off, as if it can change anything now.

And then Zoro charges in, demanding to see her, and he cannot have this discussion in front of his daughter’s shroud-covered face. He leans the umbrella up to keep her covered, presses another kiss to her forehead, steps away inside to talk with his daughters best friend and deepest rival and the thought that she will never again run by taunting students almost makes his knees give out.

This is what Kuina knows: rain, and then weightlessness, and then nothing. And then, slowly, blurrily- pain. Cold. Wet, eventually, she feels, something pressing down on her face and half-choking her. Her head hurts, and the pain spikes in time with her heartbeat. She peels her eyes open, carefully, and then shuts them again, because there is wet fabric on her face still. How could she forget that?

She reaches up, slowly, carefully, and pulls the fabric off her face. It’s tucked under her, even, and when she opens her eyes again, it’s- it’s a funeral shroud. She sucks in a breath, and then feels the pain spike when she does so. She’s laying on the ground, cold and wet and covered in a funeral shroud.

She shuts her eyes and throws herself into a sitting position. The pain nearly whites out her vision, and she whimpers. Her breathing hitches, but her eyes don’t water- she’s covered in water but her mouth is dry and her eyes are dry and her throat is scratchy. She doesn’t cough, because she’s scared of how much her head hurts.

Her vision comes back to her, in bits and pieces, and reveals dark splotches she can’t see. Why can’t she see? She moves, slowly, carefully, to look around- there’s an umbrella above her, her father’s umbrella. There’s pots of flowers and incense on the ground by her head, and there’s a picture framed she can’t see from where she is. She’s in the courtyard, she thinks, but it’s hard to be sure of anything. Her head hurts.

She needs to- she needs to get up. She reaches out, blindly grasping at the ground. She accidentally knocks some of the incense to the ground, and she can’t even find it in herself to care. She peels the funeral shroud the rest of the way off of her, throws it to the side, presses her second hand to the ground. It’s stone, with rain drains carved into it, kind of like the courtyard. Where is she?

She shifts her weight to her arms and tries to stand up. She gets halfway up, and then her head throbs and her vision swims and she falls to one knee, gasping. Why can’t she stand up? Why does her head hurt so much? She needs to- needs to what? Stand up? Was that what she was doing?

She stands up, and her vision swims but she doesn’t fall. She can’t see right, and her head hurts, and it’s raining- but she thinks she might be in the courtyard. She- where does she need to go? She’s cold and it hurts and she wants to go home. Where’s her father?

She takes a step towards the courtyard entrance. Her legs are shaky and her toes are cold but she can move. She wants to go home. Why can’t she go home?

She moves, shaky step after shaky step, until she makes her way to the entrance. The stairs are covered in rain, and they look slippery, and it looks familiar. Why is it familiar?

She doesn’t want to walk down the stairs when they’re wet. Her legs feel shaky anyways, though. She sits down on the top step and slowly, painfully, drops down onto the next step. Her head hurts with each impact but she doesn’t fall, and her legs are achy, they shouldn’t be sore, she’s strong- why does it hurt? Why can’t she see? Where is she?

She’s sitting on a set of stairs. She’s at the bottom, and the ground is covered in pulled up grass and puddles. It’s not raining much but the ground is still wet, and the sky is dark. She needs- she wants- it’s dark out, her father will be back home, she wants to go home.

She stands up and tries to make her way home. Which way is home? It’s not far, it’s not, but it’s dark and she’s cold and she can’t see. She stumbles her way towards home, she thinks, but she’s not home. Where is she?

She’s- in a forest, she thinks. It looks familiar, she spends a lot of time in the forest, but- where is she in the forest? Her head throbs. She’s so cold. How far is she from home? Shouldn’t she have found it by now? She can hear water, or maybe her ears are ringing. It’s not raining heavily. Why can she hear water?

Her legs are shaking. Or is the ground shaking? It’s not solid like it should be, it shifts and squishes under her feet. Everything feels numb, like she slept on her whole body wrong and it all fell asleep.

She can’t keep going. But she has to be so close to home, she has to be, she- where is she? She can’t see. Her knees fold under her and her head throbs in time with her heartbeat, and the spots in her vision dance with it too. The rushing in her ears gets louder and louder and louder. The ground doesn’t stop shaking but it gets subtler. She’s so cold.

This is what Monkey D. Dragon finds: the island nearest their target is drenched in rain, and thunder is rolling across the sky every once in a while. It’s dark out, and the weather is hell, but the Doc’s got an instinct sharp as razor wire, and if he says there’s trouble, then there’s trouble. They leave most of the crew to watch the ship, because they’re staking out Kokka island before anything else, but Dragon and a handful of men look over the beach and the forest near the coast, because if something is going to happen that matters it’ll be near the ship.

They don’t have any lights, but the cloud cover has broken somewhat, and he’s half-used to the dark anyways. Supply crunches happen when you’re running a revolution, and it’s better to lose candles than food or medicine. He can deal with seeing in black and white if it means they don’t die of infection.

The kids so small he almost misses her at first, curled on her side and shivering. She doesn’t look up when he gets closer, and when he kneels by her side and touches her shoulder carefully, she doesn’t respond. She just keeps shivering. Her skin is cold and covered in goosebumps.

His lips go flat, and he looks around for a house or her parents or some kind of path, any sign of where she came from, but there’s nothing. He sighs and carefully lifts her up. It’s awkward, because he doesn’t exactly hold kids very often, but he tries to keep her head up and she doesn’t cry out, so he thinks he’s probably doing alright. The kid feels even smaller once he’s holding her, because he’s used to carrying barrels and nets full of fish and his crewmates on occasion, but she’s small and cold and silent. If he couldn’t feel the tiny goosebumps on her arms, he would probably think she was dead.

He brings her back to the ship, because there’s really nowhere else to bring her. Docs waiting on the deck with a cigarette covered by one hand and his knife in the other, although if Dragon wasn’t familiar with his smoking face he wouldn't have been able to see the cigarette cherry through his cupped hand. When the Doc sees him on the ground, he says something not quite distinguishable through the distance and drops the cigarette to the floor to stomp it out.

Dragon climbs the ladder one-handed and finds Doc waiting for him at the top, knife back in its sleeve but with his hand on the handle. He looks at Dragon, then the kid, for a handful of seconds, and then sighs.

“Figures it’s something like that,” He says, and turns on his heel to enter the lower decks. “We’re gonna run out of space for kids eventually, man.”

Dragon scowls but follows him. “I didn’t say we were keeping this one.”

The Doc jiggles open the door to his office and steps through. Dragon follows, laying the kid on the bed, as Doc rummages through his supplies. “You didn’t say we were keeping the last one, either, but he’s still in the barracks, isn’t he?”

And, well, Dragon can’t exactly disagree with that. Ace’s mother hadn’t exactly been unaware of who she was giving her kid to, and there had been plenty of young fighters in the past, but the fact that there was a kid on the ship is still something of a contested point. Nobody wants to hurt the kid, but when Dragon had come back from a town one day with his hand grasped by a bouncing, grinning 8-year-old, well. There had been questions- not that Dragon had many answers.

The Doc pulls an empty waterskin out of his supplies and hands it to Dragon, then goes to actually take a look at the kid. In the candlelight, she looks even worse off- her hair is clumped together in chunks, and her breathing is shallow and uneven. The pillow beneath her head has thin streaks of red across it.

The Doctor’s lips thin as he takes a closer look, but Dragon hurries off to fill the waterskin with hot water. It’s not exactly the first time they’ve dealt with someone getting injured in the cold, and even if they were keeping lights minimal to avoid being spotted, they could cover the windows and keep the kitchens going. A warm waterpack at the foot of the bed and something warm to drink went a long way, most of the time.

By the time he gets back with a hot water skin, the kid’s head is bandaged tightly and she’s wrapped in the patient blanket, rolled on her side so she doesn’t choke if she vomits. She’s not shivering anymore, but the Doc doesn’t look worried, so he just tucks the waterpack into the blankets and takes a seat on the floor. The Doc only has one chair that’s not covered in various things, which is probably part of the reason his office always makes so much noise on the big waves.

“She’s suffered a nasty head wound,” the Doctor says conversationally. “Looks like an impact with a blunt object. It’s hard to be certain how long she was out in the rain, but considering the state she’s in and the weather, she would have died if you hadn’t found her.” He rolls his shoulders. “Of course, she could still die, if her wound gets infected. I’ve done what I can- it’s up to her spirit now.”

Dragon stands. “There’s nothing I can do for now,” he summarizes, frowning.

The Doctor shrugs. “Nothing you can do now that I can’t,” he says. “I’ll let you know if anything changes. But for now just be prepared for the Kokka raid.”

He’s right, of course. Kokka island is a handful of nautical miles away from them, and as soon as the weather breaks they’re going to attack. The Navy uses it as a port to transport weapons and metal from the local blacksmiths to different military bases. They’re anchored for now, but by daybreak they’ll be getting ready to raid a navy base, even if it’s a smaller one.

Dragon huffs out a breath. “Get me if anything changes.”

Doc hums in agreement, then waves him away. “I will,” he says. “Now get out.”

Dragon steps out and closes the door quietly, then makes his way to the barracks. In the light, he can see the soft smears of blood on his outer layer. It’s not particularly visible on the dark cloak, but he’s had plenty of practice spotting blood, and it wasn’t there before. The kid was so small on the ground- she can’t even be Ace’s age. The thought of his youngest crew member in a situation like that makes his stomach churn.

He goes to visit his son, but the memory of that kid stays in his head.

Kenshi returns from his talk with his most determined student and finds this: his daughter missing. Her funeral shroud thrown to the ground, her offerings knocked over, her picture shattered and bleeding ink in the rain. The umbrella he left for her has rolled across the courtyard floor, away from where it was sheltering her tiny face.

Her sword is still laying on the ground, her most valuable possession and the most valuable item there, undisturbed. His daughter is not.

He falls to his knees and screams.

Who could have taken her? She was so small, on the courtyard ground- who would have desecrated such a small corpse? Surely even the animals could tell she was so small, so young- surely even the animals wouldn’t take such a cold, silent child from her father.

(They would, of course. He knows that, doesn’t he? The stairs she played on as a child were not afraid to take her, the building she’d run through a million times didn’t hesitate to drop her, the ground she’d dug through as a toddler didn’t wait to let her blood puddle with the rainwater.)

The sky clears a couple hours before dawn. Dragon sends out the signal, and they haul up the anchor and get a move on. They keep the deck dark, to avoid being spotted, and anywhere with lights on in the lower decks has curtains tightly closed. He managed to get some sleep, after leaving the Doc’s office, and when he makes his way to the kitchens he doesn’t get any coffee. He’s heading into battle; the last thing he needs are shaky hands.

Ace is already in the kitchens, arguing with Ryourinin about his ability to handle being part of the raid. Dragon shoots him a look and, predictably, it does nothing to deter him. The kids 13 and too damn confident in himself to be allowed in the field, even if he was old enough to grow a beard. He’s been trying to get in on one of the fights for a couple months, but he’s really picked it up in the last few weeks, and Dragon gets the sense that if he doesn’t find a way to get the facts through the kid’s skull, he’ll do something stupid and dangerous.

He pauses for a moment, considering. Because, well, they can’t exactly leave their Doctor on the ship during a raid, in case someone gets injured badly, but there’s still a patient in need of monitoring. And, Dragon thinks grimly, there’s few lessons on risk with as much sticking power as keeping a lookout on head wounds.

“Ace,” He says, and the kid pauses his argument to actually look at him, probably expecting a fight. “Come with me to talk to the Doc. I’ve got a job for you.”

The kid brightens, eyes sparkling, and Dragon knows that if he doesn’t do something his son is going to get his skull shattered by some government worker with a gun. The walk to the Doctor’s office isn’t quite quiet, because Ace is half-skipping the whole way with excitement (god help him, this kid wanted onto the battlefield), but the dark morning and impending battle keeps most people busy.

The Doctor is awake when they get there, although Dragon has never quite known when the man actually sleeps, so it’s hard to say if he’s been awake the whole time or just woke up early. The door to his office is cracked open, but he’s just writing in his office log, and when they enter he glances between them and tilts an ear towards Dragon in acknowledgement.

“Commander,” he says, but keeps writing. “I was wondering when you’d be around. Kid’s improved, but the head wound still needs monitoring. I was gonna put Goto in charge of watching her during the raid.”

Dragon clasps a hand on Ace’s shoulder. “Ace is looking to help during the raid,” he says evenly, ignoring the way Ace snaps around and stares at him with wide, betrayed eyes. The first thing Dragon had learned when dealing with children was that they would not hesitate to exploit any scrap of weakness, with the tenacity of a starving dog and fear of a toddler wandering by the shore.

Doc evidently knows what Dragon means, because he pauses his writing to look up. “Oh?”

Dragon nods, and pushes Ace towards the Doc. “We’ve got enough time for a rundown on the situation,” he says. “We’ll be attacking at daybreak. Ace, I want you to stick behind and keep an eye on our guest. Doc, be ready in two hours.”

And then he steps out of the office, and leaves Ace to learn about the miracle of major head wounds.

Kenshi stands, eventually, after a moment that feels like forever but isn’t even close. His students followed the sound of his scream, and his daughter’s best friend and worst rival followed him out into the courtyard in the first place. Her sword is still on the ground, and who would take his daughter but not a sword?

He breaths, slowly. “Wild animals,” he says, “must have snuck in while we were gone. We will break up into groups and find her.”

He looks to the forest. It’s dark, and the rain is lighter than it was but everything is still wet and cold. Under the wispy incense smoke, the wind smells like rain.

(This is what his daughter smells, asleep in a bed that is not hers: ocean air and fresh cotton and bitter coffee and blood.)

The Wyvern glides near-silently through the ocean, cutting into whatever remaining waves still try to shake it after the storm. Kokka is visible on the horizon an hour before dawn, and the Doc creeps up onto deck half an hour after that. Dragon keeps his eyes on the horizon for navy scouts as the crew finishes last-minute preparations around him.

“Any change?” He asks the Doctor, still surveying the island.

The Doc makes a noncommittal hmm. “Some improvement, like I said earlier. But the kid hasn’t woken up yet, and probably won’t for a bit, if she wakes up at all.”

If. The girl’s, what, a couple years younger than Ace, maybe? And she might never wake up. Ace isn’t any kind of doctor, but if putting him in charge of monitoring an injury like that means he won’t be there to charge into danger and get himself killed, Dragon will do it as many times as he needs to.

He knows he can’t keep the kid away forever. He’s known it for months, maybe even years. But if he can just delay it until he’s sure the kid won’t get himself killed, until he can be confident he won’t have to return to Furusato and tell his son’s mother she doesn’t have a kid anymore because he couldn’t protect the boy from himself…

Ace is 13, and at his age Dragon was getting into fights with town officials and still toying with the idea of leaving home. He’s never really considered himself especially parental- Ace was already half-grown when he showed up, after all- but the thought of his kid dying before he’s stopped growing isn’t exactly nice.

“And Ace?” Dragon pulls out his spyglass to get a better look at the port.

Doc clicks his tongue. “Determined to get blood on his hands.” He shrugs. “But, well. What can you do? He’ll stay if he doesn’t think he can get away with sneaking out, and there will be people between him and the decks.”

Dragon hmms. Pauses. Hmmmmms.

“And the girl won’t wake up while we’re fighting?” He finally asks.

Doc shakes his head. “If we’re fighting long enough for her to wake up, we’ll have bigger issues than a girl with a head wound.”

Dragon inhales, slowly, and exhales through his nose. There’s nothing he can do about it but fight. It’s not a new fact, considering he’s actively fighting the world government, but it’s not a nice reminder, either.

“We’re getting close,” Dragon calls out. “Be ready for contact.” He doesn’t bother explaining the plan again, because they all know it. They’ll reach land and divide into teams; Dragon and Hikyou will sneak in to find the maps of nearby navy bases, the rest of the crew will lay enough explosives to bring the building down to its foundation. Once Dragon and Hikyou are out, they’ll blow the place to the fucking ground.

It’s not a simple plan to most people, but he’s gone through this kind of thing plenty of times. He’s got plenty of practice. He can get through this easily, barring some truly terrible luck.

Chapter Text

Relative ages- Luffy ~4 years older than Zoro, 23 in canon; Ace ~3-5 years older than Luffy, ~27 in canon? Luffy age @ gum-gum fruit = 12 at oldest

Ergo if Luffy 10 @ stairs moment, Zoro = 6, Ace = 14?

OR if Luffy 8 @ stairs moment & Zoro = 6, 2 years older than Zoro, then Ace = 12, 25 in canon? Or if 3 years older, Luffy = 9, Zoro = 6, Ace = 13?

Ace arrived on Dragon’s ship age ~8, his mother went up to Dragon when he revisited her island and said ‘this is Ace. he’s your son!’ and Dragon went ‘????????’ and she said ‘He Is Your Son’. are they related biologically? Who knows, certainly not dragon.

Ace’s mother = named Ace w/ the ‘D’ part but not the Monkey, Portgas = her family name? Portgas + given name = some pun based on mother? Cards? Portgas Jijo = Second daughter, named her kid ‘Ace’ bc first & only? OR Portgas Koppai = playing cards, some kind of gambler? Why’d she give her kid to Dragon- bc she’s also a pirate (mountian bandit?) & in trouble w law? Smth smth gambling crimes, Ace = name in part bc shes good at cards, figures that nice revolutionary guy is safer than her, intends on coming back eventually, OR told Ace his dad was a pirate bc she figured Monkey D. Dragon wouldnt return to some dinky lil island and then when he did she had to make good on a promise to let him live w his pirate dad if he came back, parted on good terms Ace was just super excited to sail the seas

Names:

Kokka island - Literally just ‘country/nation island’.

Doctor Sei Eisaihei - Eisai ‘brilliant, genius’, + ‘hei’, soldier; pun on eiseihei, field medic. Sei = ‘surname’.

Ryourinin - Lit. ‘cook, chef’

Fukushou - Lit. ‘second in command’

Kenshi - Lit. ‘swordsman’. I can’t just keep calling him Kuina’s dad forever so. Swordsman.

Teshi Goto - Teshi = 4 of a kind in cards, goto = every, each; teshigoto = hard work

Portgas Jijoko - Mother of Ace; Jijo = 2nd daughter, -ko = child & common name suffix

The Wyvern - Name of Monkey D. Dragon’s boat. Bc. bc hes a dragon and its. A wyvern.

Furusato island - Lit. ‘birthplace island’, place Ace was born & where Portgas Jijoko lived (& still lives?)

Hikyou - Lit. ‘sneaky’, ‘dastardly’

Scenes:

13yo Ace stuck watching kid instead of in battle, only child being left out of the Grown Up Stuff™ to watch over some 9yo he doesnt even know, kid wakes up mid-battle and attempts to break out to get involved and escape, Ace goes ooooh okay youre cool. new baby sibling :) bc his existing understanding of family is sometimes ppl just go on a pirate ship and become part of your family, including you. Dragon goes ‘okay 2 kids on this revolution ship is Two Many’, drops em off w Garp who a) assumes that Ace = Dragons kid so the 2nd kid also = dragons kid, b) goes ‘hmmmm i'm renaming this one’ and kuina -> luffy, moves to Luffy hometown (FIND NAME), luffy eventually transes his gender, Ace leaves, luffy eats gum-gum fruit & departs; eventually luffy & zoro meet & luffy goes hmmmm you look kinda familiar. Weird! & when he Realizes he doesnt say anything cus its too awkward & he figures a 6yo wouldnt remember

Scenes, neatened:
‘Battle’ begins, Dragon & Hikyou sneak into compound (find more details on navy base = more dangerous = extra incentive to get these kids OFF HIS SHIP ?); Ace stuck watching kid instead of getting involved in laying explosives, kid wakes up & freaks tf out, attempts to get out & ends up drawing attention, Navy noticies ongoing explosive-laying & goes on ‘lock down’, Ace goes ‘damn this kid really wants to attack people. I can respect that’, kid gets wrangled back underdeck (head injury really helps with that); Wyvern crew escapes, but message goes out about their location near Kokka, forces them to flee as fast as possible, Dragon goes ‘hmmm. well i cant just put the kid back in the dirt where i found her, i cant wait for her to wakeup and get arrested by the navy backup, & i cant keep two children on a warship at this point’, decides to leave the kids w his dad; kid stays mostly passed tf out, occasionally wakes up but is super disoriented bc of head injury & weird situation (infection to explain deteriating condition, OR staying passed out = unable to get important things like WATER AND NUTRIENTS which are v important in recovering from MAJOR HEAD WOUND & PRESUMED DEATH), scene where Dragon says goodbye to Ace??; kid wakes up suddenly living w Garp, somewhere in the East Blue in the hopes that kid might have an easier time making it home if desired, does garp just rename the kid??????, various bits abt Luffy + Ace living w Garp,

Bits:

- kid passed tf out during tradeover to garp, + too injured/disoriented to give name during few awake times before that; garp goes ‘well i'm not just calling the kid kid. I Dub Thee Luffy’ & just fucking renames the kid. ALSO dragon hands over his one son + another child so garp goes ‘yeah sure dragons got two kids’, totally assumes luffy is also dragons kid that just wasnt raised by him, makes 0 (zero) attempts at getting luffy back home

-- ALTERNATIVELY: dragon hands over the kids and says ‘take care of my son’ and garp assumes he means theyre both his sons & doesnt know kids name so just renames him luffy, & when luffy wakes up he goes hm. me….. as a Boy? ill consider it…….. & simply doesnt bring it up & just becomes a boy. When dragon finds out he has 2 sons hes just like wait a minute. when did i get two kids. But this is the guy who went to visit an island hes probably visited like once before and then came back with an 8yo kid so he just kind of Accepts it

Key points:

- the grownup pirates look so much cooler to the kids that are remembering 10-20 years in the future. dragon is so fucking lame. He can fight a revolution but he is so bad at people when hes like 20-30. Someone he maybe slept with several years ago came up and gave him an 8yo and said ‘meet your son!’ and he said ‘my what’ and she said ‘your son! Hes got your name and now he lives with you :)’ and he ended up bringing an 8yo back to his warship bc he couldnt say no

- One Piece already has a lot of it but choice > fate, its all abt change & self determination babeeey!!!

- in the words of Silas Denver Melvin: Promote Transgenderism

- rule of funny + rule of tragedy

- NEW NOTE: remember these are a bunch of revolutionaries stuck in a boat together. They might work together but they have BIZARRE unique political positions. less than the average leftist online circle bc they dont have the internet or reddit or twitter but they ARE bizarre.

-- reminder for new note: they are stuck in a boat together. They are either convincing each other or avoiding discussing their opinions on island nationalism to prevent murders. largely skew towards less regulation bc theyre all fighting the world government, but they have some bizarre unique opinions

BIZARRE POLITICAL TRAITS:

Key note: these are a bunch of people willingly conspiring against & attacking the world government. They generally agree on some important points, especially the people travelling in close contact for an extended time, but they have bizarre disagreeing points.

Monkey D. Dragon -

Doctor Sei Eisaihei - Island nationalist, believes violence inherently necessary (if he were in modern day he’d think ‘survival of the fittest’ meant the physically strongest asshole humans survived evolutionarily), thinks standardized education for general people = bad, believes ideal power structure = strongest rules. good field medic if you are dying but dont ask him about his politics or thoughts on evolution.

Ryourinin - Antinationalist, interdependancist, ideal power structure = ‘no power structure except people’, doesn’t want centralized government or religion or manufactruing or education, has SO MUCH faith in individual communities, thinks social support should come from local communities instead of institutionalized basic support

Hikyou - Thinks berries should be made of materials that determine value instead of agreed upon social construct, views standardized education as means of encouraging conformance (and ergo solution = no standardized education, not solution = change system), thinks residency should be required to prove ownership of land/buildings & uninhabited = unowned

Key points of political alignments in the One Piece universe:

- Government regulation v community regulation v self regulation (Revolutionaries tend towards community or self regulation)

- Independence v interdependence

- Island nationalism v interisland nationalism v island multinationalism v antinationalism (BIG sticking point for a lot of people, esp. fighters against world gov who get SO ANGRY abt multi-island nationalism vs who go ‘some governments are okay, just not this one’)

- Necessity & acceptable levels of violence (revolutionaries tend to skew towards ‘excessive violence acceptable at times’ at the least)

- Religion & education

- Economic system/regulation/methods

- Thoughts on Gold Roger