"We're here." Zoro said as he parked his car in front of their temporally house. His sister, Kuina, looked through one of the car's windows at the small building. The green-haired man got out of the car and opened the car door for the other passenger. His sister got out and together they walked to the front door of their new house.

The house had already furniture in it since it was a holiday home of a friend of Kuina. They could use it for as long as they needed.

Kuina sat down on the couch. "I'm going to get our stuff. You stay here." Zoro said to his sister and left to get their belongings from the car.

A few months ago, Kuina got sick. At first, they thought she had caught a bad cold or something like that. But instead of getting better after a few weeks, Kuina's condition only got worse.

They went to the doctor, but he didn't know what it was either. After a lot of medical tests at the hospital, she got diagnosed with some kind of terminal disease. The sickness affects the body and brain. It causes someone to suffer from bad headaches, organ failure, a lot of pain and breathing difficulties.

This sickness will kill Kuina. There is only one (experimental) treatment. The treatment for this disease is very expensive and can only be given in an other country. Zoro and Kuina don't have enough money for the flight to that county, let alone the treatment.

Even with the treatment the chances of Kuina surviving are only twenty percent. Well, at least it's twenty percent more than without the treatment.

They decided to move temporally to a place outside the city they lived in. The air in the city is full of smoke and other pollution. This made it difficult for Kuina to breathe properly. A friend of her told them that they could move to his holiday home near the mountains. There are only small villages there and the air is cleaner.

Zoro and his sister accepted the offer. Sure, it wouldn't help cure the disease, but now the woman could breathe more easily which made living more bearable. They would stay there until they have enough money for the treatment or until Kuina succumbs to her sickness.

Zoro picked up the last of their things and locked the car. He went inside and put the box he was holding down on the ground. He went to check on his sister only to find her fast asleep on the couch. He couldn't blame her. It had been a long day and they were both tired.

He picked her up and carried her upstairs to one of the bedrooms. She wasn't very heavy. She had lost a lot of weight the past few weeks, another symptom of her disease. She didn't eat much and would occasionally throw up the food that she ate.

He laid her down on the bed and covered her with a blanket. He then went back down to grab some dinner for himself. The meal was simple; just a few sandwiches they hadn't eaten during the ride.

He finished eating and began unpacking some of the boxes. Only the most necessary things, like toothbrushes and toothpaste, food and clothes. He could unpack the rest the next day.

He brushed his teeth and changed into his pyjamas. After checking one last time on his sister, he went to the other bedroom. He hadn't napped at all that day so he was more tired than usual. He fell asleep as soon as he hit the bed.

The next morning he and Kuina ate breakfast in their new kitchen. After that, Zoro began unpacking the rest of their things while Kuina was sitting in the backyard reading a book. The man did everything by himself because he didn't want his sister to wast the little energy she had.

Zoro finished unpacking within half an hour. They didn't have that many things with them. The only thing they still needed to do was get supplies for dinner. They somehow managed to forget buying things like meat and vegetables. Fortunately, the nearest village was not even a ten minute ride from where they were.

"Kuina, I'm going to town. Do you need me to buy anything for you?" He asked his sister as he grabbed his car keys. "No, thank you. Just get the food. I'll call you if I change my mind." She said. The man waved her goodbye and left through the front door.

He got in his car and drove away. He used an app on his phone to navigate to the village. Kuina had insisted that he used it because he always got lost (this isn't true, the road just moves all the time).

The village was small, only a dozen of houses. There was a big lake nearby called East Blue. Zoro parked his car in the parking lot near the small supermarket and got out.

Even though the supermarket was small, everything he needed was there. And it was cheap too. He got everything he needed, paid for the supplies and left the store. He hadn't even been there for ten minutes, so Zoro decided to drink something at the local bar.

He put all the things he had bought in his car and walked through town looking for the bar. He found it at the back of the town. It looked a bit like a western saloon on both the inside and outside. There were all kinds of fishing supplies hanging on the walls and there were a few aquariums with all kinds of colourful fish in it.

There was nobody in the building except for the man behind the bar. Zoro sat down at the bar. The bartender looked up from his magazine. The man looked to be in his late fifties or begin sixties. He was smoking a big pipe. That probably wasn't a good idea considering the whole building was made of wood.

"I've never seen you here before. You new in town?" The man asked. Zoro shook his head. "No, I'm living temporally in a house nearby. You could call it a vacation of some sort." He answered, not really feeling like explaining his and his sister's situation. "Could I have a beer?"

"Sure, as long as you pay for it." The bartender said and went to get a beer for his customer. This gave Zoro time to look at the wall behind the bar. There were all kinds of papers pinned at the wall. Some were photos, others were things cut from newspapers. The thing that caught Zoro's attention was a wanted poster.

On the wanted poster was a drawing of some kind of monster. A sea monster to be precisely. The creature had the tail of a shark and the upper body of some humanoid creature. It had sharp teeth and claws. The bounty on the creature's head was $1.000.000. Dead or alive.

The bartender returned with the beer and a glass. He put them both down in front of the other man. Zoro took the bottle and poured himself some beer. He took a sip of his drink. Yeah, this is good beer.

"Who or what is that creature on the poster?" Zoro asked the man as he pointed at the wanted poster. "Oh that? That's the East Blue Monster. It's a terrifying monster that lives in the lake near town.

It's very hostile and has killed a lot of people over the years. Sometimes, the bodies of its victims were never found. The drawing you see here is made by an artist who drew the monster with the help of someone who had an encounter with the creature and survived.

They say that the monster is thousands of years old and was awoken a couple of years ago by an unlucky fisherman who accidentally caught the creature with his hook. Many brave men have tried to catch or kill the monster, but all have failed.

With every death the bounty on its head grew until the monster was worth $1.000.000. That is the price the families of the victims are willing to pay for the creature's capture or death." The man finished talking.

"Thousands of years old? Why do they think that?" Zoro asked as he took another sip of his beer. "The monster appeared about ten years back out of nowhere. There isn't any kind of river or other passage where the creature could come through and the monster doesn't look capable of moving on land. It must have been in the lake even before people began to inhabit the land around the lake." The man told him.

It all sounded like bullshit in Zoro's ears. Monsters didn't exist, but the bounty on the fictional creature's head was very high. More than enough to pay for Kuina's treatment. Maybe he should go and look to see if the creature really existed.

Zoro drank the last of his beer and stood up. Taking a look by the lake wouldn't hurt anyone. He waved goodbye to the bartender and left the bar. He got in his car and drove away. There was a small sand path leading to the lake which you could drive over with your car. He had to drive down the mountain a bit.

He arrived at the lake and parked his car. He got out and looked at the environment surrounding the lake. It was beautiful. It hadn't been touched by humans for years, probably because of the monster.

Zoro sat down on a big rock near the water, his legs dangling just above the water. He could see the whole lake from there. There didn't seem to be any unusual activities in the water. He decided to just sit there for a while. Maybe he could take a small nap. It was nice and quiet here..

Zoro woke up a little while later. He wasn't sure why, but he had the strange feeling he was being watched. He looked around him. There was nobody in sight. The water was quiet too.

He looked on his watch. More than an hour had passed. He hoped Kuina wasn't mad at him for taking so long. He should get going. There was no monster to be seen.

He was about to get off the rock when something in the water caught his eye. Just below the rock he was sitting on. Something big moved in the water.

He slowly looked down at the water just below his dangling feet. What he saw made his blood run cold. Two big eyes stared back at him. The eyes belonged to a face. The face was a few inches below the surface. He quickly pulled his legs away form the water and away from the creature.

Who or what was down there seem to have noticed it had been seen and shot away in the water. Zoro could see a small bit of a red tail before it disappeared, leaving the shocked and confused man behind.

Zoro just sat there for several seconds staring at the water below. What had he just seen? Was that the monster? It did look a bit like the creature of the drawing on the wanted poster, but not quite the same.

In the brief moment he had been able to see the creature, he saw that it didn't look as threatening as the monster on the wanted poster. The creature he had seen looked more.. human. Except for the tail, that is.

He scanned the lake for another sign of the creature he had seen not even a minute ago, but he couldn't find anything. He hadn't been dreaming, right? No, he was pretty sure he was awake.

Zoro stood up and walked to his car. He had seen enough. He took a seat in his car and drove away. If what he had seen was real, then..

..maybe, just maybe, he had found a way to get money for his sister's treatment.

AN: I had this idea in my head for some time now. I don't think it's going to be a long story, but I've always wanted to try something like this.

Also, the price on the bounty poster isn't as high as the bounties in the real One Piece anime and manga. This is mostly because it's more like the real world and I don't think anyone would give several millions for the capture of a creature. I still wanted to make the bounty high though, so $1.000.000 it is!

I hope you like it and thank you for reading!