The New World Journal of Siegfried E. R. Thorson.

Entry #1

While I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting, whatever that boy is destined for, a career in carpentry is most definitively not written upon it's pages.

I have considered myself a good teacher for most of my life, but as the fresh night breeze of the open sea wafts into my temporary cabin onboard the Baratie, I am reminded that while nailing a board together might be possible for anyone, the same may not be said for the concept of load bearing walls or of insulated ones.

Here I am; an old man dropped through the sky into an unfamiliar ocean in a world that, as impossible as the notion seems, may not be my own, and what have I done? Nearly pull several muscles by climbing up the shear face of a boat instead of calling for a ladder,

make friends with an old sea-dog and spend the evening and morning talking without actually comprehending what kind of situation I've gotten myself into,

raid a ship's galley like a naughty child stealing chocolate from a pantry,

force my favoured smoking blends on a young man without even asking him,

nearly break my arm and legs by slipping off a crow's nest like a fresh faced sailor that hadn't even found the concept of sea-legs,

and then accept the worst carpentry student I've ever had for an impossible deadline on a mere feeling.

I am, for the first time since I was rudely taken from my warm garden, happy that Katherine is not here. To allow her to see me acting like this would be a humiliation that would last until the end of my days and beyond.

Yet I suppose that I must not be so hard on myself. I am an old man that has been taken from house and home against his will and flung like an old glove into a lake made of syrup. An old hand in a sticky situation if you will.

But this is a journal is it not? So I suppose that I should return to recording my experiences, rather than rattling off my complaints like an old man ranting about the problem with today's youth.

New world subject #1 Luffy. D. Monkey.

My interactions with the young captain have been... interesting, to put it mildly. I had initially thought that my experiences here would peak with the odd staff and location of this ship. Evidently that idea was... short sighted.

While I have my reservations about the ideas around these strange "devil fruits", the boys claim that he is now made of rubber due to eating one is thus far supported only by an unusually good amount of flexibility and an absolute refusal to adhere to the idea of sitting still for longer than two minutes.

In addition to this, the young man that now resides in the drafty ruin that I have inadvertently damned myself to possesses a snore that would give a hippo with a congested jet engine for a nose pause for thought.

Sleep-deprived comparisons of hypothetical hippos aside, the boy has shown nothing but the most earnest and enthusiastic personality that I have witnessed in quite some time. Its rather infectious actually. I've found myself, despite my better judgment, getting carried away in admittedly entertaining discussions about adventure, dreams, and beetle collecting. Its made focusing on instructing him something of a problem.

Allow me to recall an exert of the day and put it to pen.

)

(

"Luffy, you should know that as much as I'd like to keep this up, I would prefer it if we actually managed to get

beyond teaching you to not bend a nail before the day is out."

He was hanging by his legs in a rather precarious position above the open ocean on the ruined remains of what had been a handcrafted ceiling rafter. Luffy had suggested that we might get a better understanding of how to fix the wall if we knew what it could hold.

Somehow this had lead me to the point where we were both simply sitting on the roof.

Well, I was sitting, he was hanging.

He looked up at me in a manner that was almost sheepish. "I don't know what you mean Professor, we're doing a lot of hard work here making sure the roof's solid." If I had been my grandson's stuffed dog, I might have had a chance of believing him.

Before I even had a chance to object to his obvious false conversational lead, he had already begun speaking again.

"You know Professor, it was pretty neat of you to help me out like that with the old chef." He smiled

"You're really cool for an old geezer." And I had almost been touched. But still, his attitude was refreshing, in it's own rude way.

I smiled back at him. "Thank you." I wasn't sure what to say beyond that, so I continued as best I could and tried to focus on his first statement.

"It wasn't all that though, I just enjoy the opportunity to teach. If it helps someone earnest out a jam, then all the better for it, I say, and you my boy were most certainly earnest when we met." I looked back at that moment and I suddenly remembered something.

"Luffy, I hope you don't mind, but talking of when we met, you mentioned that you wanted to be the King of the Pirates. Since it seems like we're not going to be getting down anytime soon." I looked at the waves that rocked against the side of the ship and suddenly realized how much I would prefer to not reacquaint myself with the ocean's loving grasp so soon after my last tryst.

"How about we declare this a siesta and might satisfy my curiosity about that statement, if you don't mind of course." The grin that spread across the boy's mouth was one of the largest yet. As he stood up and looked across the vast expanse of shining water before us, he placed his hand upon his straw hat.

"I want to explore the world and see everything there is to see, I want to be the freest man on the sea. That's my dream, that's what it means to be The King of the Pirates." As he said this I studied his eyes, It didn't seem like it mattered to him whether I thought his aspiration was foolish or not, Luffy had wanderlust written in his soul.

As I took in the little speech I looked out across the ocean as well, reminded of my own aspirations when I had set out to the larger world in my youth. As long ago as it was, the dull memory felt a little clearer after I had received the young captain's words.

I came out of my reminiscence to find that Luffy was watching me with a look of surprisingly deep thought across his face.

"So what's your dream Professor?" He asked simply

After a second that was comparable to an hour, I answered. "When I was young, my only dream was to have a good life, a good family and good memories beside me when I passed on." My words were true. I had wanted all that when I was scarcely twelve.

"Wow! It's pretty neat talking to someone that already made their dream! Kinda a boring one though." He laughed.

But the way he looked at me; I was almost certain he felt that there was something else.

I chuckled and halfheartedly tossed a wood chip at him. "Maybe, I guess I was pretty old even when I was young." I rose up from my seat and stretched my old back. "But we should get back to work, there's a lot to do here and a lot of time to do it in."

He jumped up with the enthusiasm of a hundred young dogs being taken for a walk at the same time. "Yeah! I'll become so good at carpentry I'll get this whole thing done in one day!"

To this day I do not know how that cabin remained standing after he demolished the third wall.

(

)

P.S.

"Hey everyone. Thanks for waiting so long. I know it's been a while but here's the newest chapter. I ended up having to rewrite the whole thing after my computer crashed so that added to the time a bit."

"Anyways, this is sort of a format that I was thinking about taking for the next couple of chapters. The Professor will simply write in his log about his interactions with the crew over the course of the four days that it took Don Krieg to arrive with snippets written in first person to go along with them."

"While I don't plan to do the whole of the story like this, I thought it would be a useful tool to jump from interaction to interaction without too much trouble. So what do you guys think?"

"Thanks for the reviews, favourites and follows will I was writing. I'll do a more comprehensive response panel next chapter. Which will not take as looooong to come out this time."

B. R. III.