Archive of Our Own ^beta

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Fuck this shit. You get up from your desk, ignore Stacy at the reception and walk out. You're sick of your boss. Sick of your work. Sick of having to endure your shitty wage that's significantly lower than your colleague's just because you're a woman. 

Which is made even worse by the fact that your colleague constantly piggybacks off of your hard work, claiming your successes as his own. When you protest and tell your boss about this you become the bad guy for trying to "stir up company drama". 

You're sure this is going to have some legal consequences that will bite you in the butt. It's not like you're particularly well off either, in fact you're piss poor, so you're in desperate need of this - or any other - job, but that dependency and lack of an alternative is what finally caused you to snap. 

Fuck this shit, you repeat internally once more. There has to be some other way. The constant weight on your chest fuelled by anxiety and existential dread has become so heavy as of late that even breathing feels like a hassle. Stepping out of the stuffy office and into the daylight alleviates some of that burden, even if the reprieve may be nothing but temporary. 

Should you go back in? You've pretended to be a smoker to get cigarette breaks for the longest while, so if you're only gone for a short while, it'll be excusable. But you don't want to. You really don't. 

Almost randomly, your thoughts drift to your favourite series, One Piece. What would Luffy do in your shoes? You're sure that he wouldn't let himself be chained down anywhere. In fact it brings a huge smile to your face when you think about how Luffy might beat up your boss for oppressing you - you just had to buy Luffy lunch in return. 

Fuelled by that thought, you head to buy yourself some lunch. Every step further away from the office feels like a step towards freedom. The nagging voice in the back of your mind keeps saying "then how will you pay rent? food? utilities? meds for your dog?" but everything inside you screams at you to keep stepping towards freedom. You'll find another way. You have to. 

When you've walked for a few minutes, it finally hits you. You leaving means you're gonna get fired. Which means you'll never have to see your awful colleague or boss again. Never again endure their degrading remarks and mean comments about your work which you know are only meant to bring you down, yet hurt regardless. You'll never have to smell your colleague's disgusting aftershave or take any of Stacey's snide remarks.

The thoughts keep piling up, a huge grin spreading across your face. Freedom. Actual freedom. Fuck everything. Maybe you should steal a boat and become a pirate. Wouldn't that be fun? Beyond the fact that you have no idea how to handle motorized boats as you only went sailing with your dad in the past during happier times. 

When you take the next step forward on the pavement, your favourite lunch place already in sight, you step into nothingness. You look down in surprise, and see some clouds beneath you. The momentum of your movement doesn't allow for you to stop so before you know it you fall right through the hole in the pavement, suddenly finding yourself in the middle of the sky. 

What the fuck? It takes a few moments for you to realize what's happening as you start plummeting down through the clouds, but you're quick to start screaming. 

Passing through the clouds in a blink, you can see a lake? the sea? beneath you, a huge body of water stretching out as far as you can see. 

Fuck, what's the best way to land from this height?!, you panic and decide to try to be as rigid and upright as possible, bracing yourself for the fall as the waves of what must be the ocean come closer and closer rapidly. 

Right before you can hit the waves, something massive and cold closes around your body, your entire torso being held like a vice by what seems to be some kind of metal construction. Where did this even come from?! 

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You try to wriggle free out of the metal construction, but it's impossible. 

The... thing, for lack of a better word, is holding on to you impossibly tightly. 

Then, it starts to move. Rapidly you are flown through the air, towards a ship that seems to be a good hundred meters away. 

Its figurehead is a massive yellow skull, the size of which is making your stomach squirm. It also seems oddly familiar. Just not in this kind of size. 

In fact it looks an awful lot like the miniature Victoria Punk you have standing on your shelf back home in your tiny apartment. 

The ship that is home to the Kidd Pirates. Did some crazy fan build it in real life? The closer you get, the more impressed you are. 

The black sail is massive - even if massive seems to be an understatement for how impossibly large it is - and the skull looks so realistic that there's a nagging doubt in the back of your mind - it could surely only look this real if it was in fact real.

But from the little you knew about paleontology, you're pretty sure that dinosaurs with this kind of head size never existed. Sure they'd been huge, but you'd stood next to a teen tyrannosaurus fossil reconstruction once. This figurehead / hull seemed  to be ten if not a hundred times larger than that rex's head. 

The object has you flying towards the deck and the sight of what awaits you there has your jaw drop into the ocean below you. 

On the deck stands the most amazing group of cosplayers you've ever seen. 

You have one absolutely massive and muscular man cosplaying the captain, Eustass Kidd. The cosplay is so true to the anime original that you can't help but keep staring even as you're dropped on the deck unceremoniously. From those beautiful salamander pants with the purple ruffles to the two sets of belts to the scars adorning his face and open chest to the metal arm. Which looks like it hasn't been finished yet, but most Kidd cosplayers you know don't even bother making a metal arm because it's such a hassle to make and then subsequently carry around. 

Besides this wonderful cosplayer whom you already want to ask for all kinds of cosplay advice, stands somebody cosplaying Killer. Again it's an incredible muscular man with a chest so large it'd make every woman you know green with jealousy. The helmet is spot-on and the blue shirt he's wearing is sporting that particular Killer Jolly Roger that you've always wanted to know the origin of. This cosplayer too has taken the effort to make the weapons, the spinning blades that Killer is so famous for. When you look at them closely you can see the metal reflect the bright sunlight, making you blink in confusion. Usually cosplayers weren't allowed to bring actual weapons to conventions, but you were on a strange cosplay ship after all, so maybe the rules were lax or different here? 

You're unapologetically staring at everyone and are about to inspect breathtakingly accurate depictions of Heat, Wire, Dive and Quincy as the Kidd cosplayer jolts you out of your thoughts. "Oi. What the hell were you falling out of the sky for?"

You hadn't known what to expect, having watched One Piece in both the English, Japanese and German dub. A deep and growly voice like Daisuke Namikawa's? More like Justin Cook's? Or perhaps more like the super manly sounding Ole Pfennig? 

This Kidd cosplayer's voice was nothing like any of them. Deep and manly sure, but with a quality that was impossible to pinpoint and name, making it quite different from all the voices you'd known to associate with this character.

You only knew a little about accents but you thought it kind of sounded Scottish. Which was a really fun touch, considering Oda had said in an SBS that Kidd would be from Scotland in real life. You're getting more and more impressed with these cosplayers - they really knew their stuff. Maybe they'd been that muscular beforehand, lending their bodies well to cosplays of their respective characters, but learning an entire accent just to adhere to something Oda had said in an SBS? Wow. You wished you were that dedicated to... well, anything, honestly. 

Seeing as you still haven't responded, being as starstruck as you are, Kidd's voice rings out again. "Ye think yourself too good to reply, lassie?" 

Yup, definitely Scottish. Kidd's been one of your favourite characters for as long as you can remember, so it takes everything for you not to fangirl. This is just a cosplayer. Don't be weird about this. Don't be weird about this. 

You try to tame the massive grin spreading on your face and speak in a somewhat subdued tone. "No. I just. Wow. You guys look so fucking amazing!"

Surely they must get this kind of reaction a lot. Not every cosplayer was vain, but all of them appreciated getting complimented on the hard work they'd invested to look like their favourite characters, at least in your personal experience of attending the few conventions you could actually afford. 

The reaction of this Kidd Pirates cosplayer group is nothing like what you'd expect, however. Killer goes rigid, Kidd starts to scowl, Wire looks like he's about to throw his trident into your throat and is it just you or does it look like Heat's about to roast you alive? 

"The fuck's that supposed tae mean?", Kidd snaps at you. 

"W-well, you know, like, your cosplays look really good, and you even have the accent and-", you stammer, intimidated as the large man gets up close into your personal space, towering over you as his eyes glower dangerously. 

"The fuck are ye on about?" Kidd seems to be getting more angry by the second. "Are you making fun of us?" 

You blink in absolute bewilderment. "What? No! Of course not! But like, your scars for example, they look so good they might as well be real!" 

The next thing you know, you're falling backwards onto the deck, your chin suddenly hurting like a bitch. 

"Take this weirdo to the brig. I'll talk to her later.", Kidd commands as somebody - maybe UK? Papas? Disc J? (you can never remember the names of the other Kidd Pirates, no matter how much of a fan you are) - starts dragging you off. You're still so confused. Why would that cosplayer hit you? You hadn't meant to offend him in any way. You'd just wanted to genuinely praise them! 

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You'd have expected the brig on a cosplayer's ship to be modern and have an at least acceptably comfortable cot. 

Boy, you were wrong. This brig reminds you more of something you've seen in a Pirates of the Carribean movie - dark, dingy and so wet that there's algae growing on the walls. Isn't this bad for the rest of the ship? Wouldn't the wood go bad with time? Surely the cosplayers wouldn't want such an impressive invention to go to waste just because they never bothered to clean their brig? 

But what's even worse than the fact that the floor is disgustingly wet (which is made worse by the fact that there's groaning coming from a dark corner of the brig - you're definitely not going to check what's hiding in the dark over there!) is the stench. It's unbearable, like something managed to rot away and decay without anybody taking care of it. Come to think of it, the source of it might be that something in the dark corner of the brig. All the more reason to avoid it. 

The light here is dim, so you can't say for sure how much time has passed since your arrival. You have plenty of time to think about how weird it is for cosplayers to take prisoners (which kind of makes you feel like this might be a lot more real than you could accept it to be) and how it's even weirder for you to have been imprisoned for doing a whole lot of nothing. 

After an eternity and a half, Killer comes into the room. You can't help but wonder how he looks under the mask. The other cosplayers had somehow managed to look perfectly like their anime counterparts, but a Killer cosplayer wouldn't have to look anything like his character underneath the mask. Helmet? Mask? You can't decide and instead watch Killer in silence as he approaches. 

He's carrying a steaming bowl of soup with him, a spoon stuck into it. "Hungry?", he asks simply. God, you're gonna have a fangasm with these voices. Again, not quite the voice you'd become used to, but so delightfully dark and foreboding that you just wanted to throw yourself into his arms and beg him to protect you from dangerous things.

Which was kind of ludicrous, given the fact that apparently you were the dangerous thing that had been locked away to keep the Cosplayer pirates safe. How was any of this supposed to make any sense? 

In response to your quick nod, Killer passes you the bowl of soup through a small cage that has been set into the bars as a way to pass objects. 

"Did you make this?", you ask him, carefully slurping the soup to not burn yourself on the hot liquid. You're certainly not gonna bother with table manners - you've seen the way Killer eats noodles and you don't think you've ever seen a messier sight. Hold on, that's not true! This is just a cosplayer. Not the real deal. Anything else is logistically and practically impossible. 

"Yeah.", comes the gruff and short response. He's certainly not in a talkative mood. Then again, in the anime you rarely saw him away from the Kidd Pirates, right? So maybe this cosplayer was just staying in character painfully much and unwilling to talk around strangers. If you weren't careful the edges between reality and the anime world were going to get impossibly thin and quickly at that. 

"It's good. Really good.", you mumble between slurps. 

Killer doesn't grace you with a reply for that. He just stands there and regards you, or at least that's what you think he's doing, seeing as you can't see a damned thing with the mask. It really is creepy. In the anime it had just looked cool, but faced with a two metre super muscle man towering above your prison cell, the definition of cool quickly morphed into "fuck, what have I gotten myself into?". 

"Were you trying to make fun of us?", Killer suddenly asks after you've emptied about half of the bowl. 

"No!", you yell quickly, nearly spilling some of your food in your excitement. "I think what you do is really cool." 

Killer hums. "You think pirates are cool?" His voice sounds so doubtful that he might as well be accusing you of insanity. 

"Well, no, but you're cosplayers, right?"

A few moments of silence pass, stretching into such an uncomfortable moments that you near-choke on your soup and start having the most obnoxious hiccups. 

Killer eventually admits quietly. "I don't know what that's supposed to be." 

You stare at him - or rather the mask - silently. He's just fucking with you. Right? 'Cause anything else would mean you'd actually been transported into the One Piece World. Which was absolute bollocks, to say the least. Wasn't that a popular fan fiction trope? Something with a japanese name. Not that you could look it up anymore, being stuck in a disgustingly dingy brig and all. 

Realizing he's still awaiting your response, you confess. "It's somebody who dresses up to look like somebody else." 

Killer huffs quietly. "Like an actor in a theatre play?"

"It's something like that." 

Again, more silence after that. In a way, you almost wished it had been the Kidd lookalike (it couldn't be the real deal, it couldn't) who had come to interrogate you. At least if he'd stayed true in character - you're certain you could have riled him up and started a shouting match with him. Anything but this damn continuous silence that did in fact start to make you question your sanity, just like Killer seemed to. 

"Do you possess a devil fruit?", Killer suddenly asks. 

"No, they don't have those where I'm from." There, that's the best way you could phrase that. You're proud of yourself for thinking of wording it so vaguely yet accurately at the same time. 

Killer huffs again, but you don't know him well enough to be able to read his mood. Was that disbelief? Boredom? No way for you to know. 

You hand the soup bowl back into the box and are surprised to see Killer unlock your cell. The weird groaning monster in the corner doesn't make any move to come into the light even when the cell door is open and you wonder if it's even capable of moving anymore. 

Killer gestures for you to come out. "Kidd wants to speak with you." 

You're gonna regret this. Boy, you're gonna regret this. But before you can actually ignore your intrusive thought, you step closer to Killer. His arms go up in defense immediately, if this is real his observation haki might have warned him - bullshit, of course this isn't real - but what you aim for isn't an attack as he had predicted. You manage to get your fingers underneath his mask and push it up quickly. 

It's him. It's Killer alright. Purple-painted lips, long eyelashes that hint at a somewhat feminine beauty despite the short, blond beard at his chin, long blond bangs covering most of his forehead. His eyes are shocked to say the least. This wasn't a way to take out an enemy. He'd expected you to attack him in retaliation for being locked up, not try to uncover his identity. 

For you, it's so much more than that. You'd suspected it since falling out of the skies - that sort of thing just didn't happen - but seeing the combination of the beautiful and massive Victoria Punk, the sheer amount of people with pitch-perfect cosplays, physiques, even the damn voices - this was real. This was actually real. Seeing that Killer looked exactly the way he did in the anime was the last confirmation from an onslaught of confirmations and proof of credibility that you had fought against so hard. 

But things didn't always go so well for people in the One Piece world. If the Kidd Pirates suspected you of being a spy or any kind of enemy - how could you explain yourself, after all? - then you were sure to have a shitty time here. 

Might as well do something you'd dreamed of beforehand. Quite a lot. Maybe with a little more company than you had right now, but this would do. 

You have to reach up plenty, your hands finding purchase on Killer's still-raised arms as you lean on your tip toes to kiss him gently.