The following is a work of philosophical fiction using characters created by EiichirÅ Oda and Alan Moore. Corporate ownership also involves various Shonen Jump publishers worldwide, Toei Animation and DC Comics/Warner Brothers. No money is being made, although in full disclosure, my interest in both One Piece and Watchmen has made me a major consumer. This is just another expression of how my creative process and fan-consumerism blend.
The funny thing about optimism is how one clings to it. In the case of Monkey D. Luffy, he recognizes it's both his relentless nature and the way it inspires others to see things the way he does. He need only think of how close he came to dying in the sands of Alabasta. How would his nakama have reacted if Baroque Works had thrown his corpse out in front of them? He knows they would not believe it otherwise- their belief in him and each other hard-won, the sort of loyalty Luffy suspected was strongest in the world. But stronger than death? So far he'd proved himself right, again and again, never relenting on his stubbornness and increasingly enboldened by the way all fought against him first- a reluctant ally unwilling to sail with him, a double agent or even all-out enemy. So his stubbornness, his utter belief, makes him grin at the challenge.
Luffy's fascination only grows when Chopper tells him Rorschach's human. The crew is a collection of monsters, and in their way the non-Devil Fruit crew members are the most freakish because they can hold their own in battles against powers far above their own.
It is increasingly more of an experiment as Luffy sees increasing darkness the further he makes it through the Grand Line- the World Nobles possibly only the least of the horrors made law in the civilized world.
Rorschach is onboard because he took one down. Luffy finds him fighting to ignore physical pain as he limps away from the smoking corpse.
They argue.
But Luffy is not going to leave him at the mercy of the World Government, not when he's fought against injustice without a thought of risk. Rorschach's face looks frenetic as his consciousness is slipping. He is facing something more powerful than himself, something unwilling to let him die.
Rorschach awakes onboard without his face. He's in some sort of medical facility that has elements of the world he came from and some historical era between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance . The man in the cot next to him also has no face. Two skulls staring at each other. Rorschach wonders if he's dead, if they're both dead or what.
TBC.
Yay! Brook!
It is at this point I should give you all a brief history of my One Piece fandom history. I first saw anime pictures in a Japanese fan magazine maybe 8 or 9 years ago and they struck me as some grotesque blend of Tim Burton and Popeye. Some years later, I flipped through the Yu-Gi-Oh manga (I think Shonen Jump had been around about a year at the time) at a bookstore. I got hooked, I got caught up and I went in search of more manga. Now, I will not say here what hooked me on One Piece that inspired me to buy the first volume, but future chapters will include such information.
What I will leave you with is this: The summer I was getting into One Piece, I also read Les Miserables. And one quote struck me. "When Javert laughed,--and his laugh was rare and terrible,--his thin lips parted and revealed to view not only his teeth, but his gums..."