NOVEL NEXT Chapter 2: A Second Chance
Summary: Alex/Luffy, adjusts to his new reality...
Chapter 2: A Second Chance
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AleLuffy hummed as he lay in his new bed, trying to process everything that had…well…actually just everything, really. The events of the last few hours had been informative, both from the tutorial and filling in little details about Luffy's life. It turned out, for example, that Garp had actually been raising Luffy. Like seriously, actually semi-responsibly raising him. He'd had to take occasional trips, in which case he'd been left with various people in Foosha, but he'd legitimately actually been trying to be there for his grandkid. That had ended today, at least for a while. The doctor had been livid to the point of not caring how powerful Garp was, more than ready to try forcibly removing Luffy from Garp's custody. That would never have worked, of course, but Garp himself seemed to have been genuinely scared by what happened. Enough so that he'd ultimately agreed to simply leave Luffy in the care of Makino, his most frequent caretaker when Garp had taken trips before. That actually might line up with what he remembered of the anime, since Garp had agreed not to return for at least a year. If Shanks and his crew showed up in the next few months, it would virtually guarantee that they wouldn't directly cross paths.
All of that, however, along with a dozen other details and the massive info dump of the tutorials, was not really what he was stuck processing. No, he was stuck processing the fact that he'd died. Twice, really, since he remembered both at least a little. Then there was the iseki gamer shit he'd been dropped into, the fact that he'd been reduced to 7-year-old, and…a lot more. If he hadn't been mostly a shut-in, with only one or two people he'd even call friend, he might have been stuck mourning his previous life. The truth was, though, that he'd been a shut-in for a reason. He'd been extremely poorly suited for the time he'd been born into. The information age had its amazing perks, for sure. But what it lacked was a place for Dreamers. There was little room for explorers any longer and the world had been slowly tuned more and more to suppress the idea of Big Dreams. The people in charge of the world had already gotten what they wanted, and they weren't exactly interested in letting anyone else into the club. With no patronage or inherited wealth, Alex had been looking at a hard-scrabble life of trying to climb a corporate ladder just to get by. He had hated it. He'd played their game because there was literally no other choice for a nobody like him. But he'd hated it with every fiber of his soul.
The world of One Piece, though? Fucking dangerous as hell. No question. But…it was experiencing an Age of Dreamers. They might call it the Age of the Pirates, but most of the really big-name crews were driven by more than just mayhem and greed. Oh, a lot of them were driven by things that were seriously fucked. No question about that. But that didn't change the fact that most of them had big dreams and the will to drive them to those dreams. It appealed to him. It was a bit scary as well, since he was far more aware of his own mortality than Luffy had been. But…
"Status"
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Status
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Name: Monkey D. Luffy
Title: None
Age: 7
Level: 2
Spirit Fruit: N/A
Money: 1000 Belli
Shop Points: 50
Perk Points: 1
Stats:
Strength: 10
Dexterity: 15
Endurance: 25
Intelligence: 42
Wisdom: 19
Charisma: 12
Luck: 25
Free Stat Points: 5
Perks
Gamer's Body: Grants a body that allows for the user to live the real world like a game. Wounds healed on rest. Status Effects removed on Rest.
Gamer's Mind: Allows the user to calmly and logically think things through. Gamer can suppress negative emotions at will.
The Will of D: Bearer holds the inherited will of the Family of D. Effect: Live in Interesting Times, ?, ?
Outsider's Perspective: Imported save data increases relevant stats, as well as relevant skills when acquired.
Skills
Brawling: 5
Guns: 3
Haki(Conquerors): 1
Observe: 3
Free Running: 2
Sailing: 11
Sciences: 27
More…
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…But he had an edge. Just the status window alone had required a lot of frozen time in the tutorial to wade through, and there had been a lot more skills listed originally. Life skills like Cooking, Cleaning, or Driving just to name a few. In order to bring some sort of sanity to things, however, he'd rearranged most of them into the 'More,' subcategory. He'd left only those he felt were immediately relevant to him, or critical to his vaguely imagined future. Observe, after leveling it by observing everything around town for the day, had started giving him stats for weaker civilians, too. Which gave him some idea where he was. Bluntly put, Monkey D. Luffy had been a monster. Ten to fifteen points in strength seemed to be average for an adult male. At least for a random civilian in average condition. Luffy was that strong at age 7, with far more endurance than anyone he'd been able to see the stats of just yet for good measure.
Meanwhile, he assumed that the high intelligence score came from his life as Alex. Likely the wisdom, too. Though the fact that his Charisma was still questionable hurt a bit. Particularly as, love him or hate him, Luffy had been extremely Charismatic. Which might well mean that '12' was due to 7-year-old Luffy, not 17-year-old Alex. Oof. Understandable, but oof. Similarly, Alex had known the basics of sailing, at least small recreational vessels. He'd also known quite a bit about various scientific fields. While he hadn't known exactly what he wanted to do in the future, some sort of engineering field had been one of the few things to call to him. Not overly strongly, but the puzzle solving nature of it had at least satisfied a bit of his desire to challenge the world. He'd also handled a few guns, but only at a target range and not very often. He'd never been in a single fight in his life, either, which meant the limited 'Brawling' had to have come from Luffy. Probably the Free Running too, actually. Alex hadn't been particularly athletic.
The status menu had also only been the start of the barrage. His first level up had come from completing the Tutorial, which had itself introduced the Reward System. There were no quests in his 'game' but various jobs, tasks or achievements would reward experience or Shop Points. Which had led naturally into an explanation of the System Shop, which sold very few things in Belli. Instead, it used the Shop Points he earned through the Rewards System, though there were apparently other ways to gain them, such as helping people or saving lives. From what he'd seen, whatever power had set this up seemed at least inclined to reward morally 'good' things, even if some of the examples it gave clearly showed it didn't give a damn about the law.
The Shop included a truly staggering number of things, from training tools and weapons, to food, medicine and more. There had also, much to his shock, been an entire section of the shop for Devil Fruits, thought it was labeled the Spirit Fruit Shop. They apparently required something special called a SF Coupon, many of the Fruits in said shop actually requiring multiples. A large number of them had also been greyed out. Tapping on a few of those had shown that those particular fruits were 'in use.' Which he took to mean that his Shop couldn't violate the rule of there only ever being one Devil Fruit of the same type at a time. Interestingly, he was pretty sure he knew at least one way to get SF Coupons, since he could sell things TO the shop in exchange for points. He was betting that if he somehow acquired a Devil Fruit and sold it to the shop, he'd get a Coupon out of it.
Then, of course, there had been his Inventory, Equipment Screens, Help Menu, Settings, HUD, Relationships Menu, Faction Menu, and…well…a whole overwhelming load of information. He had retained most of it, surprisingly, as apparently his high INT score affected his memory in a positive way. Something he had every intention of abusing. Theoretically. He was, after all, still trying to figure out what all this meant and what he was going to do about this new life of his. For now, he was just done with the day. He shut the menu and rolled over, giving in to the urge to just sleep…