#THE WHIRLPOOL AND THE SEA MONSTER AND THE TINY SEAL

[missmungoe]

I give you: The Navigator’s Map of Shanties for the Weary Voyager!

So my husband got the idea to make a timeline map of my Shanks x Makino series ("Shanties" for short), so that readers could better see how the different fics are connected, and while I should have been prepared, knowing full well how brilliant he is, I was not prepared for the end result. I mean look at it!!!

Some descriptions of key fics and planned updates below! The fics are listed in the recommended reading order on AO3, but feel free to chart your own course! Beware rogue whirlpools and dangerous straits, and remember that however dark and treacherous the sea, at the end of the voyage is always a safe harbour ♥

Hoist the colours! 🏴‍☠️

Heed the Siren’s Call // Shanks and Makino’s origin story, and the starting point of Shanties. Setting is pre-series to the timeskip.

Sailor's Folly // Siren's Call from Shanks' perspective. Includes the origins of Makino's sword, Siren.

Sea Songs // Sequel to Siren’s Call, set during the canon timeskip and after.

Scylla // Pirate!Makino AU, where Makino leaves East Blue with the Red-Hair Pirates at the start of One Piece.

Charybdis // Sea Songs AU, where Blackbeard destroys Fuschia and Makino goes on a trek across the Grand Line looking for Shanks, who thinks she's dead.

Mnemosyne // Kuja!Makino AU, where after Siren's Call, a pregnant Makino ends up on Amazon Lily.

Andromeda Unbound // Reverie Arc AU, where Makino, the Revolutionary Army, the Red-Hair Pirates, Straw-Hats and the Warlords join forces to crash Shanks’ execution.

On the Water // Pirate!Makino AU, where Makino and her child leave East Blue with the Red-Hair Pirates after the timeskip. Includes Shanks and Makino's floating bar, Siren's Call.

Salt Vows // Arrested!Makino AU, set during the current Egghead arc.

Tethered to Kinder Shores // Makino and the Red-Hair Pirates. Includes the origin of Makino's shanty, "Moored to Her Port".

Moon and Her Maiden // Selkie AU. Canon OP verse but Makino is a selkie.

Tideswept // Royal/Arranged Marriage AU.

Bind Me to the Tide // Soulmate AU, where soulmates feel each other's pain. Canon OP verse but with soulmates.

Love In Good Liquor // One-Shot collection set during the different Shanties verses.

Planned updates

This list is not comprehensive (meaning I have more fics that I plan to continue than the ones listed here), but it's the stories I'm focusing on right now:

Andromeda Unbound // Chapter 9/9 ✅ (Complete)

Bind Me to the Tide // Chapter 5/? ✅

Mnemosyne // Chapter 29/29 ✅ (Complete)

Salt Vows // Chapter 3/? ✅

Tideswept // Chapter 10/10 ✅ (Complete)

On the Water // Chapter 4/5

[whirlybirdwhat]

East Sea of Monsters - Chapter 16

Zoro has always been different than the rest - with a beast inside his chest that is howling to get out and a connection to other worlds that no one else quite has - but he doesn’t care. (He’s the Demon of the Demon Sea after all)

-

Read the entire series on Ao3 for better quality and authors notes! Gen, creepy, featuring all of the Straw Hats, multi-chapter story. (Tag “Ficart” on my blog should also show some fan art for this fic!)

“The East Blue has a different nickname to those in the Grand Line, and those who hail it as home have a few… unique traits.”

-

Paths - Zoro

In a town such as his, small, mountain bound, and old, there are traditions and rules to be followed. Be polite to your elders, be kind, do not stay out past dark, celebrate Hallowtide, give offerings of blood at the village entrance but only ever your own – and do not fight for the sake of fighting.

Zoro, of course, ignores all of this.

(They say there are many ways to walk about the world, some more dangerous than others. They say that those born on this tiny island have the vision to see them, all of them, the way the world shifts at every touch and the glowing paths of mist that show the way between worlds.)

He walks into to the town, ignoring the cupped stone hands and dagger at the entrance, and searches for the nearest dojo. His clothes are patched and dirty, a wheat straw hangs from his mouth, and eyes dot his limbs, blinking and merging back to skin within an instant. Blood drips from his lips from his latest scuffle, when an uppercut cause the fangs protruding from mouth to pierce upwards. Of course, he hit them back twice as hard.

(They would be known for it – but they are a secluded village, a secluded island, hidden deep within the East. They have walked so many paths between so many worlds, it is hard to know where home is – so they choose to remain stationary. Letting the roots of their souls sink down into the ground, cementing themselves in the earth. Their skin grows stiff and their hair fern like, waving in the wind as they watch the multitude of paths – of strings connecting each plane of reality intersecting into thousands of possibilities. A hand waves through them, and all at once a reality is destroyed)

His feet are barefoot as he walks into the dojo, not out of respect but because he has no shoes to wear. There are bleeding marks along his skin, rocks that dug beneath hardened scales as he tackled his enemy to the ground in his latest scuffle. His pointed ear is pierced – the first of three he hopes – and his sole possession besides his clothes, a single golden earring, lies in his pocket. He can’t find a mirror to put it in his ear. He shakes with every step – his last meal was three days ago, and it was only a bite of bread – but he is determined.

(Zoro, despite being from this particular island, has no vision of these paths between worlds)

He marches up to the dojo, disguises his hunger and hollow face with a snarling grin, and makes the same deal he has made at the rest.

Let me fight your students – If I win, I get a meal and a place to rest my head. If your students win, you can choose what you desire from me.

He has never lost before.

(Zoro has only ever seen one path – golden, gleaming, and right under his feet. It twists and loops and he doesn’t always follow it (where does it start and where does it end?) but it leads him to where he must be.)

He loses.

To her.

(This one path will lead him down the path of greatness, of blood, of death. It is the only path he wants in life.)

He joins the dojo.

(It is the path the planes take him to)

-

Zoro’s different than the other children, everyone can tell. For one – he’s never stationary, unless he’s napping, and his skin does not crawl with bark and roots like the rest of them (though his hair is by far the deepest green.)

He’s different, because there’s a fire in his chest and violence along his claws. Every action has a purpose, and every motion has direction. He’s different, because in the place of roots that grow with the environment is a beast that adapts with the world.

(That conquers the world)

There are shadows along every movement, shadow limbs that follow him (becoming more physical every day), and glinting green scales along every limb that like to merge with the shadows.

Zoro has a hard time figuring out what’s real sometimes (it’s what makes him different, even Kuina can see it.)

-

Kuina’s as strong as an oak, but her father likes to treat her as if she’s a flower. Zoro doesn’t get it as he spits blood from his mouth. She’s strong, stronger than him, so why? Why?

Kuina wins against him for the 2001st time, and Zoro finds a new purpose. He’s not so different, not anymore, and now he has someone to beat.

-

Kuina falls down the stairs, and suddenly Zoro knows why she was a flower to her father.

(But he won’t let that stop him, not now, not ever.)

-

The next years are a blur of training, and a final, final act that separates him from the grown people of this island.

Zoro steps forward, and does not enter the dojo.

Instead, he enters a glade of mist and blood, with golden streams all along. Instead, he steps where one with the vision of kings can only dare see, where red shores tremble underneath soft steps. Instead, Zoro steps forward and becomes lost.

(so very lost)

Its only for a second, but a second is enough before he’s back in the dojo, Koushirou looking at the spot where his pupil, dragon skinned and shadow limbed, just appeared.

“I think,” the man says slowly, like a strong willow tree waving in the wind, “That your place is not here.”

It never was, Zoro thinks, and bows anyway. He has a mission, a promise to keep, and this island, rooted in tradition and katas and sword swings with no innovation or reaching upward, will no longer help him.

But Zoro has never been rooted and the animal (demon) inside him roars with anticipation (bloodlust) as he sets sail into the mist. Zoro does not care, and the sword at his side does not either.

Behind him, the village fades, as if it was never there to begin with.

(Or perhaps, never on the normal plane of existence.)

-

Rumors are fickle things and Zoro has no protest. If people say he is the greatest swordsman in the East Blue, so be it, it just means more challengers.

(He’s only seventeen, how pathetic must these people be by the sword?)

(He doesn’t question the people’s other strengths, like the woman with withering grins and the men who make islands out of footsteps.

He could never fight against them (not yet at least))

The rumors are a way to get to the top.

(Wado Ichimonji is not of this sea, and it does not sing for the dark waters as Zoro does. Still, even a blade as pure as this can become corrupt, and as blood spills over and over and over its gleaming blade, Zoro hears its voice grow darker, stronger, and purer in its darkness. Like a moonless night rather than murky waters.

It is a good contrast – it helps Zoro sleep at night sometimes, when the beast inside his chest will not stop howling)

Occasionally it leads to companions – or once it did at least.

He meets Johnny and Yosaku on bright day on a nameless island. He doesn’t know where he is, and he sure they don’t know either.

“You’re the demon,” They say, and Zoro barks out a laugh. They’re in the East Blue – only cowards aren’t.

All the same, he replies. “Yeah. You?”

It’s Yosaku who answers then, dust falling off his shoulders as he moves and sand pouring out of the holes in his back. “Half – dead. Can you help us?”

“Maybe, if you pay for dinner and booze.”

Johnny smiles, revealing a glint of teeth to sharp and too jagged to be of anything but the depths of the sea and seals the promise.

“Deal.”

-

The year and a half he spends with Johnny and Yosaku is the best he’s lived in all the years he roamed this earth.

They roam the east for what feels like centuries, each day something new. Johnny and Yosaku have the self-preservation that Zoro (hungry for something greater, for a place at the top, a beast inside unsatisfied) could never have and he is stronger than both of them combined - they make a good team, and Zoro hasn’t gone this far without injuries in a long time.  

That isn’t to say Johnny and Yosaku aren’t strong, however, or to say they make the best decisions.

(Yosaku’s of the desert and Johnny is of the sea. They oppose each other in every way but there’s something in the way they move that belies the power that everyone in the East has buried in their bones and blood and what soul they have left.

There’s a time when they stray into the dark waters off the coast of an Island and the soul of it starts boiling and spinning the water into a whirlpool of tremendous might that capsizes their little fishing boat unfit for journeys such as theirs despite the iron imbedded in its hull.

Johnny, agile in the water, is the one to kill the sea snake with a thousand limbs, saving his companions when the water boils with the blood of demons.

(The water remains the same dark hue, despite the blood pouring forth like a fountain from the split in the serpent’s neck. Zoro pours his sake in the water and does not think of the voices in the distance and the shapes in the fog.)

And there is a time that they wander onto land and become trapped in the swirling maze while hunting for a bounty. It is not the first time Zoro has starved nor will it be the last, but it is the only time that it is a purposeless hunger without solution.

(The only time his companions have become faceless and strangers to him – blood and a meal but not friends, not anymore.)

Zoro does not see it, unconscious as he is at the time, but it is Yosaku who chooses to fall into the earth not knowing anyway out (anyway to survive) in order to have a chance to save them all.

He’s the only reason Zoro’s alive today)

But they do make the burning in his chest just that much easier to bear, make the whispers quieter and the blade stronger, don’t they?

-

He leaves them eventually.

He’s always been different –

(a loner, some say, others monster among monsters, alone, forsaken, unwanted-) but this time it isn’t because of his scales and horns and glowing, shadow limbs and disappearing habits.

It’s because he heard Mihawk was two towns over visiting some pirate ship or other, and Johnny and Yosaku never planned to leave the East (few do – they have all heard of the Veil and how it crushes those without Will-).

It’s because Zoro has been trying to get to the Grand Line, to the Greatest Swordsman, for two years now, and he’s so close to the first step to the top.

So he leaves, and doesn’t look back beyond a casual three hand wave.

-

Mihawk isn’t there.

Asura, the name he gave the voice inside his chest, his head, his limbs and blood, (powerful and mighty) rages.

-

Zoro is alone.

(Again.  Why does it hurt this time?)

(At least he has Asura)

-

He misses Johnny and Yosaku.

(But he doesn’t look back – the past is past.)

He cuts down more foes.

-

Zoro find that the limbs that have followed him since birth (shadowy, never quite present, Asura?) are now solid enough to hold a sword. And so are the faces attached to his head.

A step to the left and the world goes blue and black – suddenly he is in a forge of something other, and there are swords in the remaining limbs.

A step to right and backwards, and he’s on a dinghy in the middle of nowhere with plenty of sake in the raft.

He sends a bottle of it to the sea, and drinks the rest before shining his blades.

(He doesn’t believe in gods but he has seen what lies in the depths of the sea.)

-

It takes concentration to will the limbs into being, so it’s a move he reserves for fellow swordsmen of renown.

Not that there are many in the East – instead, most do what Zoro is doing now, and train their natural attributes.

The fangs in his mouth are sharp enough to pierce through dragon hide now (he’s tested) and his scales are like armor (he’s tested again).

He’s alone save for the beast in his chest, but he’s stronger than ever (he thinks.)

-

The gold path that he’s been ignoring since it killed Kuina is sparking at Shells Town. H

He doesn’t care, but somehow, he manages to get stuck there for a month.

Dumb kelpie.

-

A week passes.

Nothing changes.

-

Another week passes.

Nothing changes.

(Asura’s gone quiet.

He’s thankful – Wado isn’t here to balance him out.)

-

On the third week, a boy appears, dressed in red with blood lining his sharp teeth. He’s nothing quite like Zoro’s ever seen, but the blinding gold isn’t there anymore.

Then he’s being pestered by this boy, this wannabe pirate captain, and he doesn’t care anymore.

-

“My name’s Monkey D. Luffy,” he’s says to Zoro after bullets bounced off of him. “And I’m going to be King of the Pirates.”

Zoro smirks and laughs and challenges him back. “My name is Roronoa Zoro and I’m going to be the World’s Greatest Swordsman.”

“Fitting for the Pirate King’s first mate.”

“Son of the Devil.”

“Isn’t everyone?”

-

Zoro’s in a dinghy again, fading into the fog. Next to him is his captain, who promised to let Zoro run him through if he stands in the way of Zoro’s dream.

Somehow, watching Luffy take in the world with glowing eyes, Zoro thinks that won’t happen.

He’s doesn’t feel so different anymore, not before this man with a soul darker than his, and he doesn’t feel so alone either.

-

On the other side of the red line, a pirate shares the news of Axe-hand Morgan’s sudden death at the hands of an upstart pirate with a straw hat – there’s no bounty yet, but Mihawk's curious about the rumors of the Demon of the Demon Sea who follows him.

It doesn’t take long to find out the truth.