That's the Way

In hindsight, it took an embarrassingly long time before he realized what happened.

In his defense, for the first seven years of his (second?) life he was more concerned with staying alive than discovering the reason for the vague sense of wrong hovering in the back of his mind. An orphan and only child, he was on his own as far as food, shelter and other necessities were concerned. And then there was the matter of protecting his daily haul from the sticky fingers of the other street-kids, which required the bulk of his attention.

Occasionally something would twinge as familiar or not right, but he shook off the uneasy feeling. So what if the village he lived in didn't have TV or radio (what were those? The mayor was the only one with a Transponder-). Hell, he didn't even know his own name until one day he managed to snatch three whole rolls from the baker's display and the woman yelled out, "Marshall you brat, get back here!"

Marshall huh? He mused as he munched on his bounty, then shrugged. It was a common enough name, but he liked it.

(So why was something in the back of his mind screaming in warning?)

The lack of technology had him thinking that his home village was on one of those isolated island paradises you sometimes heard about, and if he heard people talking about pirates, well that was just one of the perils of island life. Others being the animals inhabiting the jungle that covered the bulk of the island.

(Why were the animals so large?! Wolves didn't grow that big on this island they did it was normal wasn't it?)

He'd figured out early on that he was strong for his age, to say nothing of his monstrous appetite that the little food he managed to steal in town did little to sate, so he went into the jungle with the idea of setting traps and catching his own food.

It was the best and worst decision he ever made.

His first expedition ended in disaster, and he barely made it back to his hideout in one piece, bruised and bleeding but still alive. He got surprisingly few scars from the ordeal, and after he healed up, he grabbed an old knife (the only weapon he had, taken from one of the other urchins who tried to make a move on his streets), and headed right back to the jungle.

The horse-sized wolf that did the damage ended up his first catch. He felt a large amount of pride as he bit into a chunk of roast wolf, but that was nothing compared to how he felt when he learned how to make use of the wolf's pelt; the fur-lined coat he made became one of his greatest treasures.

Only once after he wised up and learned about using the terrain and picking his prey did he come close to death: he accidentally crossed into the territory of the Wolf Lord and the beast came after him like a hurricane, shattering his knife and nearly taking off his hand with the first strike (the only reason he kept the limb was because his instincts screamed seconds before those jaws clamped shut and he let go of the knife, pulling back in the nick of time).

Wolf Lord bearing down on him, he'd thrown up his arms to protect his head and braced himself, his awareness narrowed down to him and the wolf, and from the corner of his eye he saw a flash of gleaming black as those dagger-like fangs struck. Shockingly, he didn't lose his arms, and the Wolf Lord retreated, somehow missing several teeth and now watching him warily.

Not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, he ran.

(When he thought back on it later, he would want to dismiss that glimpse of black as wistful thinking but why would he be wistful he didn't even know what it was-!)

Once he calmed down and his heart rate returned to normal, he thought about what that strange blackness could have been-

(strength armor determination awareness the will to never ever bow or back down-)

--And decided it would be better to hold off on hunting for awhile, at least until he could figure it out.

When he was eight years old, one of the other urchins, a girl named Rebecca that he was kind of friends with under the tacit understanding that she didn't try to steal his food and he wouldn't beat her up and sometimes let her stay in his hideout when it was stormy, found a weird-looking fruit.

One of the best thieves among the street-kids, Rebecca claimed she broke into a merchant ship and grabbed a fancy box that she later opened to find the weird fruit inside. One of the older urchins who sometimes worked small jobs on the docks identified it as a Devil Fruit (that sense of uneasiness in the back of his mind howled) and informed her and everyone else in earshot that Devil Fruits were valuable and Rebecca promptly grabbed her loot and ran, aware of the target now on her back.

Valuable things rarely stayed in the same hands for long, and not by their owners' choice.

Marshall was strong and everyone knew it, Rebecca explained, so they'd hesitate to come after her if it meant they'd have to fight him too.

He listened quietly to her reasoning, appearing attentive but in reality his mind was far away, a whole world away in fact.

Anything else he could have dismissed, the lack of technology blamed on isolation and the overly large animals on environmental factors, but a warped, twisted fruit that gave whoever ate it powers? Denial only went so far. He had to face facts: he was in the world of One Piece.

(something clicked, and the vivid image of a bright D-shaped grin flashed through his mind)

When and where though? He didn't even know the name of the island he was on! 'Has the occasional bout of crazy weather' did not narrow it down!

Groaning, he interrupted Rebecca's babbling about how much the fruit could be worth and if he helped her she'd split the profit with him. "Fine, you can hide out here. Touch my food and you're on your own." He told her bluntly. The other kid (hell, she was younger than him wasn't she) grinned back, revealing a gap in her teeth where a baby tooth had fallen out.

"Deal!"

The Devil Fruit turned out to be the Rat-Rat Fruit, Model: Raccoon.

How did he learn this? The older kids on the street - practically teenagers - teamed up to launch a surprise attack in a bid to steal it. He was able to deal with most of them (ha! they had nothing on the jungle wolves!), but two managed to slip by in the chaos. While their compatriots were laid out moaning in pain, the pair cornered Rebecca and out of desperation, she ate the fruit.

It was his first time seeing a Zoan Devil Fruit eaten, either in this life or the last, and it was both fascinating and nerve-racking to see. He couldn't even imagine what it was like for Rebecca as her body shifted, becoming something halfway between human and raccoon. The two who slipped past him recoiled, and when Rebecca lunged at one, he knocked out the other.

Once the fight was over, he was able to get a good look at Rebecca. At least two foot taller, longer raccoonish jaw, ears, shiny black nose, small but sharp claws, backwards knees and a long furry tail in addition to what he could see of her skin being covered by gray-black fur. She honestly didn't look that bad, he thought, and after a moment told her so when she started to look nervous.

It helped, but she still looked on edge, so after a moment of thought he offered, "Want to help me go through their pockets? They owe me after trashing my hideout."

Rebecca perked up.

Fur or not, she was still the best thief on the streets.

He wound up moving hideouts, but he didn't mind that much. His old one had been getting a little cramped as he grew, and moving to a bigger one close to the jungle meant he could help Rebecca practice her powers with little danger of being spied on.

There was an old house that looked like it was on the verge of collapse that worked nicely, and he wound up spending a lot of the money (beri, it was called beri, he needed to remember that) he'd looted from the guys who jumped him buying materials to fix the place up. Luckily he had a good supply of pelts saved up that he could use as a bed and blankets or he would have been sleeping on the floor.

(Rebecca wasn't bothered; she figured out how to turn into a full raccoon and then curled up at the foot of his pelt-pile when it was time to sleep.)

He used haki on purpose for the first time when he was nine, a shining black fist smashing into the jaw of a man trying to cheat him on the price of the pelts he was selling and sending the man and several of his teeth flying in different directions.

Armament Haki, he thought with no small amount of awe as he grabbed both his pelts and the cheat's money and went on his way. If he was in any one of the Blues, that would give him a huge advantage. Now all he needed was Observation and he'd be set!

(It never occurred to think he might have the third.)

(Rebecca unlocked her Observation Haki shortly afterwards and he sulked for days.)

(And then he realized that he'd had Observation Haki running whenever he went hunting and felt like an idiot.)

The moment he learned his full name was the same moment he stood in the darkness of an alley and stared up at the gigantic ship anchored to the dock. A very familiar ship.

Images flashed through his mind.

An angry young man seeking to prove himself against one of the World's Strongest.

That same man proudly wearing an old pirate's mark, the mark of his family.

A brother turned traitor, another brother slain because of greed and lust for power.

Impel Down.

The War of the Best.

Whitebeard dead. Portgas D. Ace dead. Countless pirates and Marines dead. All because of one man's greed and ambition.

"Marshall D. Teach, isn't it amazing?" Rebecca breathed out beside him, eyes shining as she looked at that great figurehead.

"Yeah." He choked out, mind spinning with memories of things yet to come. "Amazing."

And so, so terrifying.