Wealth.
Fame.
Power.
Gold Roger, the King of the Pirates, attained this and everything else the world had to offer, and his dying words drove countless souls to the seas.
"You want my treasure? You can have it! I left everything I gathered together in one place. Now you just have to find it!"
These words drove men to the Grand Line, in pursuit of dreams greater than they could ever dare to imagine! This is the time known as the Great Pirate Era.
However, as they sought their dreams, they collided with the forces of order, the dreams of others, and the natural dangers of the world.
From this, was born chaos.
And from that chaos, came Ponies.
…..
The world was divided into 5, or some may argue 6, oceans.
The 4 that existed on the outside: the Blues North, South, East, and West, the Grand Line, and the New World that some considered part of the Grand Line and others considered so dangerous that the already dangerous Grand Line could not be compared.
It was the West Blue, on an island once known as Ohara, that Ponies had come.
When Nor’easter had landed on the island, it had been a burned out wreck, devastated as if by a long ago war. Even its lakes and rivers seemed to have been burned away, even after however long it had been.
The barrier itself seemed to struggle with purifying it of the violence. However, it had given him time to create his castle.
2 months after he had arrived, the ice white Pegasus found himself looking over everything this world had revealed to him.
Pirates who sailed the waters seeking their desires at the expense of others. Marines who enforced order at the expense of happiness and freedom, serving a corrupt group of nobles that made the dwellers of Canterlot seem far more like Fancy Pants than they had any right to be. Revolutionaries who sought to change the world, regardless of the risks. Humans and humanoids, all at war with each other, destroying everything in their wake and bringing pain and suffering to all they encountered.
A savage world, where even the tamest oceans were home to sea monsters that could swallow entire ships, weather raged in unpredictable manners that made even the fabled Everfree Forest seemed tame, and where people ate cursed fruits and became freaks the likes of which even the Princesses would fear to face.
And he, the son of the Pegasus in charge of Canterlot’s weather, certainly couldn’t defeat this world with simple brute force.
Even now, the world seemed to fight back against him. As his barrier grew and took more Islands in the West Blue underneath it, all three groups who fought in this world seemed to be against him.
If it wasn’t Pirates attacking the barrier, it was Marines. If not Marines, it was Revolutionaries. If not Revolutionaries, one of the native Sea Kings popped up in one of his taken villages and swallowed his workers before vanishing back into the depths.
He was seriously going to have to look into recruiting some horse with pest control abilities for those things. Sadly Stormfront didn’t let him borrow his giant pet fish to deal with them.
What did that Pegasus even need it for anyway: he had already done it. His world was human free.
Sure there were those things in it, but certainly they were no where near as hard to kill as giant sea serpents in the ocean?
The Sea Kings could be dealt with later though, right now he needed to deal with the world’s sentient races.
And so the Pegasus spent many an hour sitting and thinking, thinking and sitting. Trying to find a way to expedite the end of humanity.
After many hours though, Nor’easter grew bored, with no possible ideas in sight.
Perhaps a flight would help him think more?
….
Okay, perhaps less ‘flight’, and more leading an army of converted Pegasi to Conversion bomb an entire town a few miles away from the barrier, but you get the idea.
What was once a human hamlet was now free of humanity, and his Pegasi were taking his new subjects into the barrier before those damn Marines arrived and took more of them away for experimentation.
He however, stayed behind to read the humans newspapers: such articles did not survive the barrier and he had some faith in their ability to possibly give him relevant information.
After all, who suspected that the future Pegasus ruler of their world would bother having learned their written text?
And the paper had a most…..odd word in it today.
“You” Nor’easter turned his equine head to one of the newly changed, a teal earth pony. The newfoal jumped, shocked by his sudden questioning of her “Tell me, what exactly is a ‘terrorist bombing?’.
….
“Well, this is just great” the dark haired dressed in a decorated white uniform growled at his desk. Next to him, a miniature white goat that was as cute as a shy Pegasus bleated in oblivious happiness “First some magical horse appears on Ohara of all places and takes over half of the West Blue in only 3 months, and now he’s got terrorists seemingly everywhere!”
In the last month, the Marines had been getting attacked left and right by some crazed group of civilian collaborators with that mad horse. They kept setting bombs of that strange substance that kept turning people, even giants, into horses all over the place: seemingly only missing the New World because any bombers they might send got eaten, burned alive, or lost. They attacked civilians, pirates, and marines alike with no discrimination. In fact, they seemed to want to take as many lives and turn them into mindless horses as possible.
They called themselves the P.E.R. Ponies for Earths Rebirth or something stupid like that: extremists who thought the only way to end the Piracy that was ruining the world was to turn every living thing on it into a magical pony.
“If the Marines can’t save the world, we will. That’s what they’re saying anyway” an older man with a gray hair and beard growled “What hogwash: they are no better than pirates. Hell, my grandson’s better than they are, and he’s a Pirate!”
“Yes yes, we all know about your grandson Garp.” The man with the goat stated with a irritation “No need to brag about him”.
“Well at least he doesn’t make his crewmates commit horrible crimes against humanity to join him. These P.E.R nuts are only allowed to turn themselves into horses is they set off a successful terrorist attack! Honestly, why don’t we just throw the Warlords and Admirals at the barrier and see if they can damage it at all?!”
“Because they are needed to end piracy”.
Garp glared at the goat man with annoyance “Look Sengoku, I want to end piracy just as much as you do, but I don’t think this is the best time to start a war with Whitebeard. All that’s going to do is weaken us in the long run: honestly I’d release Fire Fist Ace and deal with the looming end of the world first, then we can go and kill Whitebeard some other time”.
Sengoku, as the goat man was called, shook his head “I know you want us to release your other pirate grandson Garp, but if we do that we’ll just look weak.”
“We look weak too if magical horses take over the entire West Blue while we do nothing about it.” Garp countered. The two powerful old men looked about ready to start beating the crap out of each other now over their respective priorities…..
“Fleet Admiral Sengoku, Vice-Admiral Garp sir!” a white and blue dressed Marine burst into the room, causing the two men to stop looking ready to beat each other to a pulp, if only for the moment “There’s been another P.E.R attack sirs! In the East Blue”
“What!?” Garp shouted in fear for his own home ocean. Sengoku growled, feeling a headache coming on.
“Where?” He asked in a tense voice.
….
Having just escaped the shadowy conflict on Thriller Bark, the floating ship of an island run by the Warlord Gekko Moriah, a ship floated on and on as it continued its voyage to Fishman Island.
It was a sloop, red and gold and decorated with a mast head that resembled both a lion, a sunflower, and a sun at the same time to the contention of the poor shipwright. With a grassy lawn, tangerine trees, and a colorful demeanor, one could simply mistake it for a average ship sailing the treacherous grand line.
However, then you noticed its sails, marked with a skull and crossbones with a straw hat on top. The moniker of a pirate ship, specifically the vessel of the rising star in the pirate world Monkey D. Luffy.
300 million berries were attached to his name. He had defeated two warlords, devastated a league of assassins and government black ops specialists, saved the East Blue from a mad Fishman, and defeated a mad god of lightning on an island in the clouds. His body was rubber, and his punches hit with enough forces to leave anyone feeling it for days.
Ever garbed in a straw hat and cloths that seemed more beach ready than battle ready, the black haired youth seemed well on his way to the title he so dreamed of: King of the Pirates.
He was currently sleeping on a lawn chair, snoring loudly. Much to the dismay of the girl next to him, who was currently waiting for her newspaper.
“Dammit Luffy, why do you have to snore like a freakin’ whale” the red haired swore. The beauty was a budding young woman with short red hair and a body that seemed to only get more and more mature with each passing day, covered by a blue shirt with pink poke-a-dots and blue jeans. A compass like device was strapped to her wrist, as were a set of blue pipes on her hip.
Her name was Nami, Straw Hat Pirates Navigator, money expert, and holder of a 16 million berry bounty. She really disliked that last part.
At long last though, before she gave into her impulses to stuff something down her captain’s throat to silence him, the seagull came into view with the mornings paper.
“Finally” she sighed as the News Coo landed by her side, seeking payment “Maybe now I can finally ignore that loud oaf……”
Her voice trailed off, even as the bird flew away with payment, at the news headline.
COCOYASHI VILLAGE BOMBED BY THE P.E.R. NO SURVIVORS
For about 5 seconds, the navigator digested the fate of her sister, all the people she grew up with, and her mother’s grave. The P.E.R, that mad group obsessed with turning people into horses for some strange reason, had turned them…….and probably ruined everything.
The destroyed Tangerine trees her adopted mother had worked so hard to grow, the grave she had earned from her horrible death…….
The poor villagers, who had been finally freed from the horrible reign of Arlong the Fishman, were now under tyranny once more. A tyranny there was no escape from.
Her scream of despair was so loud that no Strawhat failed to hear it.
….
Three days later, a single marine ship landed on the sight of a reported base of the P.E.R deep in the grand line….to find it completely destroyed.
It had been leveled, every man in it beaten to a pulp if they were lucky, and the stores of Conversion Potion ruined and gone.
The survivors, after they realized they could not escape justice, told them what had happened, and this message was later relayed to Marine H.Q, where several leading officers found themselves rather conflicted about the news they had been given.
The Straw Hat Pirates were now at war with the P.E.R.
As the third month ended, the War with the denizens of the seas was still going strong, now with a new force operating against them.