Prologue.

There was a lot of shouting in the street outside. I wondered idly what the fuss was about as I paid for the satchel and the brand new clothes I was wearing. "Have a nice day." The shopkeeper yelled after me. I stuffed my old clothes down the mouth of the satchel.

I pushed the doors and walked out into the bustling street.

Huh?

The 'bustling' street was actually empty. 'That's weird… it's dark too…' I looked up and saw black menacing storm clouds and the sky and the air was alive with electricity. A storm? I walked along the street in the general direction of the town's central square.

I had arrived just in time to hear the echoing words that had filled the plaza, words which I knew would become legendary one day, uttered by a 17 year old boy tied to the execution platform.

"ORE WA KAIZOKU-OU NI NARU OTOKO DA!"

I am the man who will become the Pirate King.

You don't know me yet but I am, at the moment, living my most impossible dream.

XXXXXXXXXX

~ Chapter 1. ~

The alarm set for five thirty in the morning harshly pulled me out of my OP dreams. It usually never happens with any of my other fandoms but somehow OP managed to crawl its way into my sleepy subconscious three nights in a row. Not gonna deny it, one of them was good.

I wonder if the dreams were some kind of sign along the road…

I crawled my way out of bed into my special wakey-wakey place, aka, my bathroom. Forty five minutes later, I was as close as I could be to face my five-days-a-week dose of knowledge. With my breakfast shoved down my throat, I kissed mom goodbye and headed for college.

My name is Lyra and I am mostly your typical excessively obsessed fangirl. For those of you out there who don't know what it is, OP stands for One Piece, a shitty awesome anime about a pirate na… oh to hell with it! If you don't know OP you wouldn't be here to hear my story.

I'm into a lot of things. Stories occupy about 99 percent of them. I live by stories of other people. The adventures they have, the enemies they meet, the lessons they learn, I absorb them up like a sponge dropped in water. An infinite sponge. Maybe I love these impossible stories because they're impossible, because I can never live them and this is the only way I can experience them. Who knows, maybe all us fangirls and fanboys are like that…

I'm not gonna bore you with my college life. It's great though. I have a lot of good friends, though none of them are into any of my (fangirlish) interests. They're good friends though, I can depend on them and they're utterly goofy. Though none of them are like my crazy fictional idols.

Well, formerly fictional.

I'm probably boring you with all these details about myself but I need to write them down before I forget them. Not that I'm actually forgetting them but I fear it because I don't remember many things that I ought to remember.

I remember I got home early that day; the last hour was free or something. I got home, shouted to my mom I was back, dumped my bag near the door of my room and threw myself onto my bed. It was summer and I was basically melting!

My room isn't anything special. It isn't too tiny or too big. It has a rarely-used-for-its-purpose study desk in one corner with my laptop on top, a cupboard in another corner, a bed beside it and a shelf filled with books almost replacing a wall and a window to look out into the lawn outside. Yep, I am a nerd! Not the study kind but the waste-your-life-away-online-and-in-books kind. I didn't give that title to myself because I never felt I was wasting my life away watching TV shows and anime and reading fantasy books. They taught me more life lessons that school ever could. Though I can't exactly give no value to school-obtained knowledge considering it's because I went there that I can watch what I watch and read what I read and understand it! (The credit given is purely sarcastic in nature, if any of you guys didn't get my tone.)

My first introduction into the fandom world was through a show called Supernatural. I don't know if any of you guys know about it but it's a damn awesome show. Ah, the Winchesters…

That was basically my initiation into the world of worship of fictional characters. I plunged into it headfirst and never looked back. My introduction to animes was back when I was much younger. I grew up watching Pokemon and Inazuma Eleven. I watched it dubbed back then but now I've grown to appreciate the subbed versions better.

Me coming across One Piece, I like to believe it was fate.

From here on some of my memories are hazy and basically non-existent after one point. I know the approximate happenings of the show up till that point but not the details; to be fair, I think it'd been some time since I'd seen them. After said point though, it's basically a memory blackout. I don't know why because I love the anime and I'd spent a lot of time reading fanfictions and shipping my ships. My memory regarding my personal life is crystal clear but those regarding this world are anything but. I'll tell you what I do remember though.

I went to mom and showered her with praises as I grabbed a few cookies because she was grumbling how my face was always glued to that good-for-nothing laptop of mine. I sniggered as I left because she was shouting after me even though she knew it won't do any good. But that's almost as far as either of my parents would go; they were pretty easygoing with me.

I got to my room, opening the door with half a cookie already stuffed inside my mouth. I switched on said laptop and started watching OP from where I'd left off. I was a bit new to it and still catching up to the current episodes. The manga, I am ashamed to admit, I hadn't read at all. In my defense, I was planning to. I played the episode as I tried to multi task by putting on my ear plugs and eating at the same time. I don't remember which episode it was and I don't remember when I saw 'it' but I did.

A fruit with the most exquisite color of blue and green mixed together. The swirls and designs on it were so capturing I felt each line, each curve had a story of its own to tell. It had a beauty of its own that was on a completely different level.

When I see something or someone pretty on screen, I always touch it in a futile attempt to be close to the actual person or thing. It's a weird impulse of mine. On the same impulse, my hand got closer to touch the screen because the image on it had captured my entire attention. My hand moved forward but I never touched the screen. My fingertips felt slightly… out-of-the-world-ish.

I blinked. I pulled my hand that had sunk into the screen back with lightening speed and cradled it in my other one. I don't think it registered for a moment but when it did…

Countdown sequence for Mode Freak Out.

3. Heartbeat racing.

2. Eyes widening.

1. Mouth hanging.

0. Commence mode.

WHAT. THE. HELL?

I comically tried to leap back but ended up toppling over my chair and lie sprawled on the floor. My mom bellowed from downstairs, "Lyra! What in the world are you doing up the there?" I scrambled to get up but could only handle being on all fours. "NOTHING! NOTHING HAPPENED!"

" Nothing happened… right?" I mumbled.

I realized that I was hoping that nothing had happened and something did happen at the same time. I crept back to the laptop and used the desk to sit on my chair again since I was pretty sure I couldn't stand. I narrowed my eyes at the laptop in front of me as if expecting it to blow up or try to eat me or something. What was I looking for, the laptop to turn into a zombie Transformer?

I experimentally tried to touch the screen again. The Devil's Fruit- I'd figured by then that it couldn't be anything else-was still taking up about one-third of the screen. I closed in to touch it and I saw my hands were slightly shaking. But again, there was no skin-to-screen contact. This time though I fought my instinct to pull my hand back to safety. Something was thrashing away inside of me. It was urging me to plunge myself into the screen. I managed to suppress it but not fully because my hand was already swallowed up by the screen, making a grab for the Fruit.

I felt my hands close in around the magical object and pulled it back, a feeling akin to sudden blood flow crawling through my hand. I looked at the impossible object, feeling its contours fit snuggly into my hand. It looked like a bit of an oversized alphonso mango except it was blue and green and it had incredibly beautiful and intricate designs that looked like it could move any second. The colors were rippling across the surface as it caught the light. Even the stem on top of the Fruit seemed somehow artistically curved.

I was at a loss for words. 'What in the world just happened? What in the world is HAPPENING?' I looked down at the item cradled in my palm. Legs still a bit wobbly, I walked over slowly and placed it on my bed with caution and backed the hell away. I remember thinking at that moment that everything would explode if not treated with caution, including my sanity. I was torn between calling out for the only sane person left in the house and banging my head on the wall till I woke up. Maybe I fell asleep in bed when I got home.

Then suddenly I remembered. 'The laptop!' I looked back at the object that had apparently evolved to become a Devil's Fruit Tree. I don't know what was playing right then or if anything even was but I distinctly remember being able to touch the screen. I let out a lungful of air I didn't realize I was holding. 'Well that's one thing back to normal.'

I wondered if this was all just an incredibly good but incredibly scary dream. The incredibly real yet incredibly impossible item on my bed was telling me otherwise.

"Now what am I supposed to do?"

'I wonder if I should eat it.'

'Don't accept food from strangers!' my mom's favorite advice bounced about in my head. 'It isn't exactly from a stranger is it?' I reasoned with my inner mom voice, smirking, 'That laptop is practically my friend who's been with me through thick and thin.'

'STOP JOKING AROUND!' my mom's voice screamed inside me so loud, I winced because it literally hurt my ears.

'What's the worst that could come of it? It might not even work…' I countered, eyeing the Fruit as I walked slowly toward my bed.

'You won't be able to swim, ever!' My inner voice retorted back, this time sounding more like myself. Maybe my inner mom voice quieted down because the fangirl area was unchartered for her.

'I don't know how to swim either way!'

'You might turn into a pile of goop.'

'Highly unlikely.'

'Whatever! If anything happens, it'll happen to you.' I gave a bitch face to no one in particular but aimed at the insanely annoying but realistic inner me and closed my hand around the supposedly rare Devil's Fruit, mythical in my case, for the second time.

I looked at the Fruit and then back at the screen, as if expecting it to fly back to its actual residence. When nothing happened, I looked back at the Fruit, observing its intricate beauty while trying to stop the what-the-hell-are-you-doing chant currently gaining momentum in my head.

"Well, here goes nothi… everything." I muttered and took on my first bite.

XXXXXXXXXX

A\N : Oh god this is my first ever fanfic please go easy on me please please please!

Heyya guys I'm the gal behind the scenes... feel free to call me Traveler though I've never actually done anything to deserve the name but hey, a girl can dream. I'm sorry if there's anything grammer and spelling wise, this work is unbetaed(is that even how you spell it?).

I hope everyone likes my story and Lyra, and please gimme reviews! I live on reviews. They are my nourishment, so don't let me starve. I don't mind harsh reviews either as long as you trying to be at least a little bit constructive. And feel free to ask any damn question you want!

Oh god, this is gonna be so much fun! *jumps around in my bed from hyperactiveness*

Peace out, bitches! 3