Plurk paste

It was the biggest donut that Luffy had ever seen, and he wasn't sure he was seeing it. Though the seas were chocked full of interesting stuff, and at any other time of the day he would be whooping and latched on it with arms and legs, biting huge mouthfulls out of its spongey chocolate surface until he either finished it or it sank beneath him.

But now he wasn't so sure. Some weird instinct held him back. Maybe it was because a strange silence had settled over the morning, the sea still sleeping under a blanket of mist that muffled the sound. Maybe it was because the donut was floatng massively, but perfectly still, before Sunny's prow, and the strong, proud ship had also stilled.

Luffy rubbed his arm under his nose and sniffed, heading toward the prow, his bare feet slapping against the dew wet deck. He went up the stairs and climbed around one of the Sunny's sun mane beams so he was on the figurehead itself. The donut floated in front of him and smelled delcious and salty.

He hesitated and reached out to touch it and suddenly it wipped around, splashing him with water.

"You have a face!" Luffy said as the donut gloweered down at him. It did have a face. Eyes and a mouth and a beard and tiny arms, one holding a bag of smaller donuts, feeding himself with the other.

"Luffy..." the donut said and Luffy didn't even ask why the donut knew his name because now the beard was white and there was a scar by its eye and its eyebrows were thick and heavy.

"Jii-chan?!" Luffy said, hands pulled into loose uncertain fists. "Why are you a donut? Did you get eaten?"

"I won't let you past me!" he said, angrily, sadly. "Even if you are my grandson!"

And Luffy was running up again, up the ramp the scissors guy had made, the sound of battle below him, the sting of smoke in his nose, the taste of blood in his mouth. Jii-chan waited, in the way, of course he was but Luffy was going to hit him and it was going to hurt but he didn't care because something more important was waiting up there obscured by the mist even as the ramp became slick. He drew back his fist--

--And woke up. The lion was licking his hair worriedly as old man Rayleigh watched him from where he was perched on a stone.

"You're leaving," Luffy said, knowing without caring how he knew.

"Soon, yeah."

Luffy nodded and reached up, grabbing the lion's canine as it came down with the rest of his mouth to try and eat Luffy up.

"That's it? Just a yeah?" Rayleigh asked with a smile that meant he was laughing at himself, too.

"Yeah," Luffy said, smiling back and releasing the lion so its jaw snapped shut before moving to sit on its nose. "Take care, na."

"You too." He stood, finishing the last of whatever he was drinking and when he smiled at Luffy again, it seemed more genuine. "You have the worst case of bedhead that I've ever seen."

"Shishishi" Luffy rubbed the back of his head and fluffed it up more. "Thanks!"

"Thanks?" Rayleigh arched an eyebrow.

"It makes me notorious!" If bedhead was bad and pirates were the worst, Luffy wanted to have the worst bedhead there was. He was getting so strong he didn't even need a bed to do it.