Author's note: This is my first try for a One Piece story, so I hope I will do the characters justice, however if someone seems OOC, I apologize. Also, English isn't my native language, so I'm sorry if there's some weird word combination or something.

Anyway I hope you enjoy this story.

Prologue

„Sanjiiiiii~! Foooood~!" „Sanji is not here. Why do you think we're heading to Big Mom right now?!", Nami said, while rolling her eyes. "Sanji~" "Luffy! I just said-" "Hercules beetle… lemme catch ya…" "Huh?" "Yohoho Luffy-san has been sleeping for a while now", Brook explained while sipping his tea. "Seriously, I'll never get how you guys can be so relaxed all the time. We're in the New World for god's sake."

The New World, also known as The Second Half of the Grand Line, is the most dangerous of all seas. It's a place where Infamous pirates are known to wreak havoc and compete for the title of Pirate King. This fight to reach the top has been going on for 22 years, since the first and last Pirate King was executed. The legendary Pirate King Gol D. Roger was the reason why the Golden Age of Pirates started and has been an inspiration for many men to set sail since then. One of the men inspired by the Pirate King is one Monkey D. Luffy. Being only 19 years old, Luffy is one of the youngest Captains competing for the title. Despite that he is already well on the way to becoming a legend himself.

Not that he looks like it.

It was probably not the best timing for the storm to hit. Some members of the Strawhats were on a mission to get their kidnapped crew member back. The fact that this crew member was kidnapped by his own family, in order to be sold out to one of the Emperors of the New World, increased the danger of this mission by quite a bit. However, captain Monkey D. Luffy couldn't care less about details like this and so the rescue mission was about to start, as soon as they reached the territory of this certain Emperor.

"This looks bad. I've never seen a cloud formation like this", Nami, the expert navigator admitted. "For now, let's-!" She was interrupted by a crashing sound of thunder, accompanied by bright pink lightning. "The lightning is so bright, it hurts my eyes! Ah… but I don't have eyes yohohoho", the skeleton of the crew laughed. "This is no time for your stupid skull jokes, Brook! We need to hurry up and AAHHH!" A thunderbolt chose this moment to make contact with the deck of the Thousand Sunny. Or to be more precise, the thunderbolt hit the still sleeping captain of the ship. Now, under normal circumstances being hit by lightning was nothing Luffy had to worry about, since he was made of rubber ever since he ate the Gomu Gomu no Mi. Those were not normal circumstances though, and as soon as the lightning hit, the captain vanished, leaving behind a confused crew, a completely unharmed ship and clear skies.