Disclaimer: I don't own One Piece or Pokémon, or any characters/pkmn!

So, this is my second FanFiction, and it's based on Pokémon HeartGold. Luffy is post-Ace leaving, so he's pretty out-of-character right now. He's being serious for once, contemplating what he's going to do and still missing his childhood companion. I promise he'll cheer up. Pokémon do that to people. ^-^ Enjoy!

Luffy gazed up at the sky, watching an oddly shaped green bird cut through the sky above him. "So bored… when will Ace come back? And Shanks…" He fingered the straw hat on his head, reminiscing over each little scratch and how it was inflicted. Each frayed piece of straw was as familiar as his own gum-gum powers.

The bird dropped closer to the boy and made an unusual chirp, deigning to hover just a few meters above his head. Luffy gazed up at it, growing more and more intrigued by each flap of the tiny wings. "I've never seen such an weird bird!"

The creature bristled and made as if to fly away, but the boy continued. "Are you all alone in the world…?"

The bird's eyes widened and it drifted even closer until it was perched on his head. It began humming softly. "Yeah… I thought so. Wow, look at your eyes. So big and shiny… I guess most of your kind has been captured and sold…"

The bird hopped down in front of him, shaking its large head sadly. It held up a stubby arm as if gesturing to itself. Luffy stared. "You mean… You're the only one? Ever?" Up close, he could see that it most definitely was not an ordinary bird. It almost reminded him of a bug, with its small wings and short antennae.

"Oh, then… You're even more lonely than me… I'm sorry. How can I be moping about, when others are even worse off than I am?" Luffy hung his head, then began nodding, thinking up one of his incredibly stupid ideas.

"I know! You can live with me! I'm sure the village won't mind!"

'Cebi!'

Luffy dropped his fists, which he had been pumping into the air. "What? You're making those cool sounds again… That means you think it's a great idea!"

'Lebi!' The bird flitted upwards, raising its small arms towards the sky in an imitation of Luffy's pose.

"Yeah! We're a team now! Nothing can stop us, Cebi Lebi!" Luffy punched the air, careful not to reveal his gum-gum powers so he wouldn't scare off his new friend.

'Aaaaaaa… BI!' Celebi exploded into a burst light, calling forth its space-time dimensional rift, which bathed Luffy in a brilliant glow.

The rubber boy stared, jaw dropping to the ground. Celebi ignored the small detail, concentrating on holding the portal in place. 'CELI!'

"Um, all right, Cebi! If you're sure…" Luffy leapt into the light, allowing it to carry him away, into the blinding darkness where he could forget about Ace and Shanks… at least for the time being.

…

"Hey, kid! Are you all right?"

Luffy yawned, stretching his arms out as far as he could without alarming normal people. "Yup!"

"…Oh. Well, that's a relief. My mom would kill me if someone got killed on our lawn again…"

The rubber boy sat up, looking around at his surroundings. "This is a lawn? What…"

A tan boy wearing a black and yellow cap held out a hand. Luffy accepted it and shook it soundly before pulling himself up. "Hey, nice hair!"

The boy grinned and twisted a tuft of jet-black subconsciously. There was hair poking all over from underneath the strange hat. Luffy wondered if that was how his hair looked. "Thanks… I do it myself. So, what's your name?"

"Luffy!" Grinning at the strange boy, the rubber kid felt a strong sense of goodness in the boy, and he couldn't ignore it. "Are you my nakama now?"

The boy gave him an odd look. "No, my name's Gold. Why don't you just name your pokémon 'Nakama'?"

"Huh?" Pokéman? Name something Nakama? Luffy frowned, his good mood dissipating. "No way! Whatever a pokéman is, if I got to name it, I'd use something a lot cooler! Like 'Beam'…"

Gold pursed his lips. "You're an odd one. I don't think I've ever met someone who didn't know what Pokémon are. Uh… follow me."

Luffy shrugged and trotted along after the strange boy. For a moment, he wondered where Cebi was, then pushed the thought away. He had no idea where he was, so he would let his little green friend arrange their reunion.

Gold led the rubber boy into his house, which was a normal one by most standards, if you overlooked the strange box with little people and monsters running around inside. And the tall white box that blasted Luffy with cold air, and the black box in the far corner that seemed to emanating heat…Yup. Normal house.

"You sure are weird," Luffy muttered. "What's with all these weird cubes…? Are they created with the power of a devil fruit?"

Gold laughed. "We only have normal fruits, here. C'mon, dude. Everyone has a TV, these days. Unless you're from a poor town, like Cinne… Never mind." He sat down on the sofa, the one piece of furniture that looked vaguely familiar to his foreign visitor. "Oh, hey. I just got my PokéGear back from the shop in Goldenrod City. It's pretty nifty. Want to see?"

Luffy accepted the small rectangle uneasily. "What's it do?"

"Well, what else? It tells the time, displays a map of the world, and lets you call your friends. I hear there's even a new upgrade that will let you listen to the radio!" Gold looked impressed with his inside information, but Luffy had stopped listening at 'map.'

He pressed a few buttons and fiddled around for a moment before finding the map of the region. "Okay… so where's my island on this?"

"Your island? So are you really from Cinnebar? Gee, I'm sorry… I didn't know." Gold looked guilty, and hung his head with shame for even mentioning the tragic town.

Luffy shrugged, deciding to go with it. It was now clear that he was far from the East Blue, and it wasn't likely that he'd be able to get back without Cebi. After all, she had been the one to bring him here… "It's all right, Gold! I don't really care. It's not like I had a real home anyway, just my nakama… urk."

Gold looked terrible, filled with remorse for making Luffy remember his nakama… even though he had no idea what the word meant. "Just forget I ever said anything. Er, come on, Luffy. Let's go one step further to take your mind off things, and get you your first pokémon!"

Luffy followed him back out of the house, past Gold's overly-friendly mother. She seemed to be so cheerful because of some adventure Gold was going off on… "Gold, what's your adventure?"

Gold's face lit up as he started talking about his passion. "I'm going to catch all of the pokémon in the region! It's part of Professor Oak's new PokéDex project! There are believed to be about 256 pokémon in the Johto region, and it's going to be my mission to document each and every one!"

"That's nice," Luffy mumbled, picking his nose.

"Hey, let me finish! Since you don't know a thing about pokémon, you should be paying more attention."

Luffy nodded, doubting the usefulness of capturing creatures against their will. "Right. Then, what are these 'pokéman,' exactly?"

"…Oh. Right, I forgot you don't even know. Seriously, what rock have you been living under?! …Um, pokémon are creatures that live alongside people, yada yada, helping us and providing companionship, yada yada… And they're all over the place! It's kind of hard to miss them."

Gold stared as Luffy walked right past a Pidgey, two Rattata, and a Geodude. While picking his nose and staring straight at the grass. And mumbling, "I don't see any…"

"Are you kidding?! They're right here!" Gold lifted up a Rattata, shoving it in the rubber boy's face.

"…That's a purple rat thing."

Gold rolled his eyes, setting down the pokémon and lifting up a Pidgey instead. "And this?"

"Bird."

"Hmmm?"

Luffy narrowed his eyes. "Are you kidding? That's just a rock!"

Gold sighed. Apparently, he'd found the one person who was completely ignorant of all things pokémon… Luffy was not the best person to recruit for Elm's cause.

"Oh! Cebi!" Gold snapped to attention as Luffy held out his arms to let a flying-type pokémon hover out of the sky and snuggle against his chest. "I've been wondering where you were... Are you okay? You look exhausted…"

Gold's mouth dropped open. He'd never seen such a pokémon, which meant it had to be something very rare. That wasn't the only astonishing thing about the two, though. For someone who claimed to never have heard of pokémon, Luffy was hugging this one like an actor in a PokéCenter ad.

"Oh, right! Cebi, this is Gold! Gold, Cebi." Luffy introduced his odd friends to each other, and the two locked eyes to nod at each other.

Gold broke the stare and looked back up at Luffy quizzically. "So… I see you already have a pokémon. I've never seen this one before, though. Is it specific to, er, Cinnebar?"

"I don't know. I've never seen anything like Cebi before, either." Luffy almost added that he'd also never seen anything like the purple rat thing, the fat bird, or the rock, but decided against it.

Gold shrugged. "Well, then, let's go see Professor Elm now. I'm sure he'll know what Cebi is. And he promised me a pokémon, anyway."

Luffy burst out laughing. "You trying to lecture me, when you didn't even have a pokéman, yourself?!"

The other boy's face flushed as he led Luffy back to his hometown. "So, what? It doesn't matter. I still know more than you do... and I definitely have a better chance of beating the Champion than you, too!"

"Huh? A Champion?" Luffy asked, intrigued.

"You haven't heard of Dragon Master Lance? He's the current Pokémon Champion! A lot of people want to test their battle skills against him, but they have to get through the Elite Four, first. I heard a rumor, though, that there's an even better guy than Lance, named Red..." Gold shrugged. "But it's not very likely that anyone will ever beat either of them. I was just saying, I know more about pokémon than you. So there."

"What happens if you beat the Champion?"

Gold frowned. "Well, you become the Champion. Or, that's how it should work..."

"All right, then! I've decided!" Luffy raised Cebi over his head, shouting a promise that could be heard throughout the entirety of New Bark Town. "I'll beat the Champion! I will be... the King of the Pokéman!"

[ Edited 7-14-18 ]

[ Original Creation Date: 8-18-13 ]

Footnote: Originally, everything was tapped directly into the FanFiction Document Editor via a Kindle Fire tablet. But now, I'm editing on my computer -praise Arceus- so I have the power of Alt codes at my disposal. I'm dropping é's left and right. I won't edit any comments made by my younger self in later chapters regarding their absence, but those comments will be wrong, now. Just a heads up.