I swear that I'm cursed with something called the chapter 7 curse. At chapter 7, I hit a roadblock and I can't get over it. Also, usually by chapter 7, I'm out of the previous fandom craze, which was what happened to my Percy Jackson story. I've also been out of the One Piece fandom since the start of 2017 because of Hamilton and Marvel... Anyway, I had most of this written and I thank my beta for being so patient with me and reminding me about this story!

Also, the next update won't be for a while, same with my other stories because I have exams in May and lots of stuff to do. It should cool down enough my June though.

Anyway, rushed a bit here, but please enjoy chapter 8 of Freedom is All I Want!

Word count: 1825

Chapter 8

It was not difficult to leave the shipwright's place without him noticing. What was really the challenge was to keep Ace from going into every single restaurant for food. He did not have a lot of money and my monthly allowance had not arrived yet. I didn't want us to be first known as the "eat-and-dash" pirates.

Loguetown was a mash of pirates and Marines despite the latter trying to suppress the former. It was a well-known place for most East Blue pirates to visit before leaving for Grand Line. Even crews from the other seas longed to go visit the place where the Pirate King was executed, the place where this new era of piracy had started. Thus, there were shops and restaurants around town catering to all kinds of people; pirates, bounty hunters, Marines, and simple villagers. I even knew of a few stores that welcomed revolutionaries, my own store having been one of them.

I had a lot of time in the past to properly explore the town. With the income I get every year, it wasn't difficult to go around and shop for the things I needed. I made sure to disguise myself every time, so no good marine would recognize me and report back to Mariejois. For the Celestial Dragons back in Grand Line, I was recovering from "trauma" of that accident from several years ago and had gone on a journey to find myself accompanied by my servants. It wouldn't do well to let them know where the servants really went nor that I was indulging myself, partying about in bars, gathering information.

This time, I realized that the shock of seeing another character from the show I used to watch, so close to me, had turned off my reasoning. Impulsively, I had asked to join his crew even though it wasn't canon at all and I would be totally exposed to the world. Yes, I wanted to explore the world and go on adventures, but I was not ready to interact daily with a character that I might get attached to and might die in...what, was it two years? Three years? Or maybe four…? Once again, I cursed myself for having lost that suitcase containing all the important dates I could remember. After the traumatic experience with Sabo's "death", I had moved on to try and find my belongings which I vaguely remembered to have slipped out of my hands during my fall. However, no matter who I asked, no one remembered finding a suitcase that matched the description. I wondered where it could be now… but I suppose it was probably lost at sea…

...

Back to Ace and I! After our "escape" from the shipwright's place, we ran freely around town to the docks by the sea. The sun was slowly setting already and we both flopped down ungracefully and enjoyed the view of the sunset. The sky, unlike the deep blood red color it was back during Sabo's accident, was now a beautiful shade of orange and yellow, with dashes of pink clouds floating above like a heavenly wreath. We hung around a bit more after the sun went below the horizon, but soon found ourselves hungry once more, though it was mostly Ace's stomach that complained about its emptiness.

The One Piece world was much more lenient about age limits than my previous world. Despite my age of sixteen and Ace, who probably just turned seventeen, the bar we went into let us in without a hitch. Once you've lived in Loguetown for long enough, there were specific places that you learned to avoid if you were a pirate, or you learned to stay away from if you wanted the town intact from a marine-pirate confrontation.

The bar that I led Ace into was a pirate bar, a low-key one at that, because I wasn't sure if having someone remember my captain's face before he even had a crew was a good thing. I didn't want someone to suddenly become curious about the newest rookie pirate and research too deep into him before I-no we- were ready. The barkeeper glanced at us disinterestedly, already used to the coming and going of local pirates, and approached us slowly, hands still mixing a drink for a nearby cowboy. That's right, One Piece had strange fashion sense. Here was a man who wore a cowboy hat like the old west movies, and there was this other guy who wore a straw hat and just looked like some farmer. Luffy, the future Farmer King.

Anyway, due to our age, we were determined to not look like complete noobs in the bar. Ace settled himself comfortably into the rickety old stool while I lounged on the slightly dirty counter. I raised a hand as casually as I could and called:

"Ya have some cola here?"

Ace followed with his own order.

"A tank o' Sam Adams, old man!" How risque.

The cowboy gave us an amused look but quickly took his drink and let the man serve us. The barkeeper frowned a bit, but came to us anyway.

"No trouble in my bar, hear that lads?" He warned us in a low voice before pouring a jug of cola into a glass and dropping a few cubes of ice in it. "Here ye go, simple and cool." I took the glass with a straight face and started chugging it down immediately. Ace stared at me, as though I was a completely different person. He was soon handed a tankard of beer and quickly chugged it down himself. It came to my attention that we hadn't drank a single drop of water since this afternoon.

When we had slowed down with our drinking, the cowboy who had been by the counter before us sidled up to Ace's side.

"Hey kid, what are you doing out here in Loguetown? I haven't seen you before!" he greeted while chuckling.

Ace looked at him appreciatively and eyed the way toned muscles showed on his bare chest. I myself was contemplating about where I saw that man before. The most likely answer would be that he was an original member of Ace's crew in the show. I decided to not interfere with Ace and the man's conversation.

"So?" the man inquired.

Ace grinned at him, fierce and determined. "We're going to be pirates! The best of the best!"

The man stared at him for a moment then burst out laughing to Ace's indignation.

"You kids heading to Grand Line then? Haven't seen boys this young heading over there alone for a while!"

"You've been to Grand Line?"

"Nah, but I've sailed close to the entrance. I can navigate pretty well on the sea ya know? Speaking of which, ye need some help with crew gathering? Dun think two's enough peeps to get to Grand Line unless you're plannin' on taking a long swim in the sea and never come back up!"

"Don't underestimate us! We'll take whatever's thrown at us!" I interrupted, ignoring my own decision. The man laughed harder.

"Oh you kids got some funk! Alrighty, if ya need a navigator, jus call me 'kay?" He slowly got up and ambled out the door, clearly a bit drunk from the tankard of liquor he just drank. Ace looked at his back contemplatively. He pondered for a while, waiting for the man to leave our view, before turning to me.

"Can you navigate?"

"Ahaha, no."

"Damn. Guess we'll take his offer eh, Cyd?"

I shrugged. "Whatever you say Cap, I say we go after him now before he's left Loguetown."

Ace and I got up from our seat and I stretched a bit, feeling out the kinks in my body.

We rushed out of the bar (after paying) and Ace spotted the guy from before. It was very easy to find him as unlike my assumption of him leaving, the man was leaning against a wall of an imposing house, clearly asleep. Ace marched over and swung him onto his back.

"Alright, let's go back."

I stared at him incredulously. He raised an eyebrow. "We don't want to lose him right?"

"Errr yeah?"

"So, we'll just bring him along."

I decided not to note out loud that this may not paint the best picture of ourselves and we could technically be called 'kidnappers' in this situation. So instead of doing the lawful thing of leaving him in a safe place, I went along with my captain's idea. Ace refused my help to carry the poor guy and took in a deep breath before sprinting out towards the shipwright's place, leaving me in the dust of his wake. I doubled over immediately, coughing, and attracted the attention of a few Marines in the area. One of them even hobbled over.

"Hey lad, are you alright?"

I coughed a bit more, but waved my hand reassuringly.

"Yeah. I'm okay. I will be okay. Just… not… liking… the taste of… dust!" He looked at me a bit concerned, but went back to his fellow Marine comrades to patrol.

I caught my breath for longer than a minute without coughing and decided that I was fit to leave their presence as soon as possible. I've become an aspiring pirate and an accomplice to a kidnapper after all.

By the time I was back the lonely cabin on the hill, both Ace and the shipwright were eyeing each other, the drunk, unconscious cowboy guy still over Ace's back. I came over, carefully taking him from Ace and laying him out on the side. I crouched down and watched what was happening between the other two men.

It didn't seem like an argument I would like to get into. Basically, Ace was trying to get that shipwright to hurry up, so we can set sail already, but the man was adamant in taking a week at least to build that ship. Also, I'm pretty sure Ace wanted him on our crew too. Way to make an impression, huh. Surely though, I could see the other guy's resistance slowly melt away. The D. brothers sure had that effect on people.

The cowboy guy woke up a day later and introduced himself as Davy J. Boy. Well, that was an easy name to remember. Contrary to our shipwright's stiff acceptance to join our crew, Davy was very enthusiastic in helping us with the navigation of the ship in our journey. Once that was settled and the ship was done being built, I drew up our flag from the vague memory I had of it. After receiving the complete approval of Ace and the rest, we took only a day to pack up everything, mostly the shipwright since he was not planning to sail with us until three days ago.

A few hours later, we were gone, setting sail towards the marvelous Grand Line, thoughts of adventures already on our mind.

I'M SO SORRY ABOUT THE DELAY!

please R&R if you can forgive me...

I rushed through the ending here because I was hitting a block and I had this giant gap in my "planning" where I jump right to slightly pre-canon.