Renji was seven years old, running barefoot through streets he'd known his whole life.
His mother was calling him for dinner...
His father was mending nets by the dock...
His little sister was chasing butterflies in the garden...
Their family hovered just above the poverty line. Not drowning, but never quite learning to swim either. Two meals a day. Sometimes. Three if Father's catch was good, if the merchants paid fair, if Mother could make the rice stretch one more day.
The house had holes in the roof they plugged with canvas. Renji's clothes were his father's old shirts, cut down and re-stitched. His sister's doll was made from fishing net and cork.
But they had each other.
Father worked dawn to dusk and sometimes beyond. He never complained. He'd come home smelling like salt and fish, ruffle Renji's hair, and tell him that "A man's authority comes from what he can provide." Then he'd sit at their table and pretend he wasn't hungry so the children could have seconds.
Mother stretched every coin until it screamed. She could make soup from fish bones and hope. She taught Renji to read using charcoal on driftwood because paper was expensive. She sang while she worked, old songs about ancient kings and their eternal kingdoms, and somehow made their poverty feel like a temporary inconvenience rather than a life sentence.
Renji's job was to help. Carry water from the well. Collect firewood. Watch his sister. He took it seriously, this responsibility. At seven years old, he already understood that his family survived because everyone contributed.
The village was full of fishermen and farmers mostly. Good people. Poor people. The kind the World Government forgot about unless it was time to collect taxes.
Nothing special ever happened here.
Nothing bad had ever happened here.
Nothing bad could happen here.
That's where the story ended in his mind, he couldn't remember what happened after that... nothing.
Tiny visions flashed in his mind though.
Renji dropped to his knees beside his mother. Shook her shoulder. "Mama, please. Please wake up. Please-"
His sister was still crying, trying to crawl out from under Mother's body. "Renji, I'm scared! Where's Papa? Where's-"
A fruit.
Spiraling patterns. Unnatural colors. It was in the ground, partially uncovered.
Devil Fruit.
Even at seven, Renji knew what that meant. He'd heard the stories. One bite and you'd gain power beyond imagining. One bite and you'd never be able to swim again.
His sister coughed. Weakly. Her eyes were closing.
"No no no no-" Renji looked around wildly. No one was coming. Everyone was dead or running. The warships were still firing. The village was gone. His family was gone.
"This isn't happening," he whispered. "This isn't real."
He grabbed the fruit with shaking hands. Bit into it. The taste was so horrible he nearly vomited, but he forced it down, forced himself to swallow, forced himself to believe that if he had this power, maybe he could stop whatever happened there.
"This isn't happening," Renji commanded. "None of this is real. This is pretend."
The world shuddered.
For a moment, the flames froze. The screaming stopped.
And in that moment, seven-year-old Renji's mind did what it had to do to survive.
It broke.
------------------------------
Renji stood in what used to be the village square, twenty years old now, one hand resting on his sword.
He'd been standing here for an hour.
"This never happened," he said quietly. "This isn't real."
The air shimmered. A flicker of what it was appeared for a split second.
Then they flickered out.
"You will obey me," he said to the empty ruins. "I command you to be whole. I command you to exist."
Nothing changed.
But it would. Eventually, once he was strong enough, once his authority was absolute enough, he'd be able to command even the past itself. He was certain of it.
He'd done this ritual seven times now. Once a year, every year, since he'd been strong enough to sail back here alone. Each time he failed, he gained a deeper understanding of his power. Each time, he got closer.
This island was abandoned now, erased from the map. No one knew it existed except him.
"Next year," he promised the empty air. "Next year I'll be stronger. Next year you'll have to listen."
He looked at the ruined docks, where he tied up his dinghy, and then at the sun. Maybe it was getting late...
He walked back to the docks and untied his dinghy, and prepared to sail again. He placed his sword in a storage compartment below. It was a simple, mediocre sword that he commanded an amateur blacksmith to make. He named it grandly though, the King's Blade.
He had a condition with his mind... he'd come to realize about it on his own, far too late. His mind had a habit of imagining things that are not real.
The doctors called it psychosis. Delusions. Schizophrenia, maybe. They'd used a lot of words that meant the same thing: you can't trust your own mind.
It worked in his favour, though.
The Command-Command Fruit only worked if you truly believed you had the authority to give commands. A sane person would doubt. Would question. Would hesitate.
Renji never hesitated.
When he commanded a door to open, it opened because, in that moment, he genuinely believed doors had no choice but to obey him. When he told a weak-willed bandit to sleep, the man collapsed because Renji's conviction was absolute.
His schizophrenia wasn't a weakness. It was the prerequisite.
The dinghy bumped against the dock of the nearest island. Renji stood, grabbed the King's Blade, and stepped onto solid ground.
"Rope, hold fast," he commanded casually.
The line went tight, securing itself on its own.
Dust swirled around his feet, floating a bit as he walked. He knew this place; it was Alabasta, the kingdom with a lot of deserts, as he said.
"Rain, fall," he muttered, looking at the cloudless sky.
Nothing happened. His authority didn't extend to weather. Not yet, anyway.
Renji shook his head and kept walking through the port town of Nanohana. People strayed away from his path unconsciously, leaving a straight path for him to walk.
He was here for one reason: information. Crocodile was making moves in this country, as per reports in the underground networks. He'd paid high coin to get any information relating to this.
There are some links related to him being a leader of a certain organization of bounty hunters, but that was far too unbelievable for him to, well, believe.
So, he just came here to check things out.
He walked forward, scratching the back of his neck as he looked at the cafe owner nearby. The owner rushed to him with a chair and placed it on the ground, wiping off the dust.
"Water. One glass."
The cafe owner moved, pouring without question. Renji took it, didn't pay. The man wouldn't remember to ask.
He sat, sipping water that tasted like dust, watching the street. The sun was too bright. Made everything look washed out, unreal.
"Bleh," he coughed out the water. "This tastes like shit..." he said as he threw the glass at the floor, shattering it into pieces.
A few nearby civilians flinched, stepping back instinctively, giving him the space.
"Disgusting," he muttered, stepping over the fragments as if they were made of paper. "Don't y'all have better tasting water?!" he shouted out.
Silence...
"Oh, well, that's sad," he muttered.
Renji sat at the dusty table for another twenty minutes, watching the street with dead eyes.
He stood abruptly, the chair scraping against stone. "This is a waste of time."
The cafe owner didn't look up from wiping the counter. Probably didn't even remember Renji was there anymore.
He walked through Nanohana with no particular destination, hand resting on the King's Blade. The sword felt heavier today. Or maybe he was just tired. Hard to tell anymore.
A group of men sat outside a tavern, drinking booze.
Renji stopped, watching them for a moment.
"You," he said, pointing at the one with a scar across his nose. "Tell me about Crocodile."
The man looked up, annoyed. "What about him?"
"What's he doing here?"
"How the hell should I know? He's a Warlord. Probably doing Warlord shit." The man turned back to his game. "Move along."
Renji's jaw tightened. "I'm asking you a question."
"And I answered it. Now piss off before-"
It wasn't long before Renji bashed his head into the table, breaking it into pieces.
"What did you do?!"
Renji ignored him, looking down at the unconscious gambler. "Useless. You're all useless."
He kept walking.
Three hours. He'd been asking around for three hours now, moving from taverns to shops to street corners. Nobody knew anything.
A merchant mentioned something about Crocodile being a hero who stopped pirates. Another said he ran a casino called Rain Dinners. A street kid claimed he'd seen Crocodile save a village from bandits last month.
All surface-level garbage. Nothing real. Nothing useful.
This country is dying. Hasn't rained in years. People are suffering.
But that wasn't his problem. He wasn't here to save anyone. He was here for information, and there wasn't any to find.
Maybe the underground reports were wrong. Maybe Crocodile really was just a Warlord playing hero in a desert kingdom. Maybe there was no conspiracy, no organization, no secret plot worth investigating.
"Sand," he said quietly, looking at the dunes. "Rise."
Nothing happened.
"I said rise."
The sand didn't move.
Renji exhaled slowly through his nose. Of course it didn't.
"This casino of his... I wonder if I can find anything useful there," he muttered slowly, looking at the city again, wetting his lips, which dried in the hot weather.
The sun had set by the time Renji reached the casino's entry. Pretty grand and luxurious.
The casino was massive. Ostentatious. Gold trim and pristine white stone that somehow stayed clean despite the constant sandstorms in the country. A monument to wealth in a country where people were dying of thirst.
"Open," he commanded the front doors.
They swung inward without resistance.
Nobody looked at him as he walked in.
He moved through the main floor slowly, observing. Slot machines. Card tables. Roulette wheels. The average gambler's idea of heaven.
Renji's eyes tracked to a doorway at the back, flanked by two guards trying to look casual. A VIP area, probably. Or something more.
He walked toward it.
"Sir, that area is restricted-" one guard started.
"Move aside," Renji said flatly.
The guard's hand dropped from Renji's shoulder. He stepped back, confused about why he'd been blocking the path in the first place.
Renji pushed through the door.
A hallway. Cleaner than the casino floor. Quieter.
Another door. This one was locked.
"Unlock."
The mechanism clicked. The door opened.
The room beyond was purely functional. No gold trim here. Just stone walls, a large table covered in maps and documents, and-
A woman stood at the table, her back to him. Black hair. White coat. She turned slowly.
"Well," she said. "You're not supposed to be here."
"Shut up."