"It's impossible."
"I'll still do it!"
"C'mon, Naru, you can't be serious!"
The young girl growled in irritation when a hand slid into her hair and roughly tousled it. "Back off!" she snarled and slapped the intruding hand away. "Why wouldn't I be serious?"
The surrounding crowd broke out into a booming laughter. "Yer a girl, Naru," one of them chortled. "A girl can't become the Pirate King. Boys become kings, girls become queens, and there is no such thing as a Pirate Queen."
The girl's expression darkened and she stomped forward and kicked the one who had spoken in the shin. "I'll show you," she sneered and crossed her arms over her chest. "If I gather a crew, head to Grand Line and get a bounty, will you believe me then?"
"Of course not!" She bristled at the instant reply, her reaction only serving to increase the crowd's laughter. "There are a lot of female pirates with bounties out there, but none of them will become the Pirate King!"
"'It's impossible, it's impossible!'" she said loudly and threw her arms out to the sides, glaring at her village's men with burning eyes. "Nothing is impossible as long as you try your best!"
"That's enough!" The village elder finally decided the scene was going too far, so he walked up to the girl and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Give it up, Naru," he mumbled. "Nothing you say is gonna make these fools listen to you."
"No!" She twisted away from the elder and backed a few steps, teeth bared in a snarl. "I'll show all of you," she hissed. "I'll become the Pirate King, and then all of you will have to acknowledge me!"
With those words, she turned her back to the crowd and dashed past the houses, past the village's borders and towards the snowy mountains that laid close, and she didn't slow down until the village was out of sight.. "I'll do it," she breathed out as she climbed up a steep hill. "I'll definitely do it."
When she reached the top, she tilted her head back and inhaled deeply. The cool autumn air tickled her nostrils and she crinkled her nose to prevent a sneeze. The sky was clear, and a small grin crawled onto her lips as she spotted a bird flying across the endless blue. "I'll be free like you," she said. "And everybody's gonna know my name!"
As if the bird could hear her words, it chose that exact moment to release a loud tweet. The smile on the girl's lips grew wider, and she sucked in a lungful of air, holding it for a few seconds before releasing it in a shout that sounded all over the island.
"The title of the Pirate King will be mine!"
The sun had barely had the chance to rise up from the horizon before it had been covered by grey clouds, announcing to the inhabitants of Fubuki Island that today, again, would provide them with a fresh wave of snowfall. The droplets of frozen water fell heavily on the houses of every village, and while most planned to spend the day sitting in front of the warm hearth, there was one who had no such plans. In fact, this one had spent her entire night sleeping up in a tree in the middle of nowhere.
She had found a perfect spot for sleeping, a tree with branches that formed a neat little roof above her. It wasn't anywhere near comfortable, but it was the best shelter one could find out in the wild. The rains of snow had come and gone throughout the night, yet not a single snowflake had landed on her skin before now.
A single, tiny flake of snow managed to get past the protective branches of where she was hiding. The cold flake landed on her cheek, and she groaned as the cold sensation instantly roused her from her sleep. "Morning already?" she mumbled groggily and opened her sleep-deprived eyes.
She sat up straight, groaning silently as she felt her back ache from being pressed against the hard and bumpy bark for several hours. Still half asleep, she raised her arms over her head and stretched, sighing in content as the movement worked wonders for her sore muscles. She held her position for a few seconds before humming in satisfaction and looking around.
From where she sat, she could see quite far, but the landscape was the same as far as the eye could see; white fields with a few frozen trees here and there. The never-changing scenery of any North Blue island.
She slid down from the tree and shivered as she sank knee-deep into the snow. The cold quickly spread through her body, but instead of doing anything to get warm, she just sighed, hoisted her backpack further up on her shoulders and started walking south.
The dream had left her slightly irritated. Nearly twelve years had passed since Naru had sworn to become the king of pirates, but her fellow villagers had never stopped teasing her, not for one second. Not when she'd succeeded in breaking a stack of bricks with one bare-handed punch alone, nor when she'd defeated every single man from her village's dojo in one-on-one combat.
Naru froze in the middle of a step when a sweet scent suddenly reached her nostrils. She inhaled deeply, her nerves suddenly on high alert as she took in the scent of a pole deer, and she chuckled as she felt her stomach churn in hunger. "Warm up and breakfast," she grinned before spinning around and steering her steps towards the endless frozen fields of Fubuki Island.
It didn't take long before Naru reached the edge of a large forest, one she'd carelessly ventured into countless times. She'd learned that everything from small rodents to wolves lived in these woods, the predators extremely terrestrial. Nevertheless, she simply shrugged off all common sense and soundlessly prowled past the first row of trees.
The forest was dead silent, apart from the distant sound of birds chirping. Naru followed her nose, her left eyebrow twitching slightly each and every time the snow crunched underneath her shoes. A deer was a creature one rarely happened upon in these woods, and Naru had only ever gotten so close as to seeing one from several yards away.
Now, however, she was fairly confident. As the scent grew stronger, she lowered herself towards the frozen ground, moving in a crouching position to make sure no beast would spot her. She moved past an endless amount of trees, not stopping before she reached a glade. As quietly as she could, she circled a bush to get a clear view of the opening, and a wide grin stretched her lips.
A lone deer was strutting around in the glade, hopefully sniffing at the ground for anything edible. It was far from skinny with impressive horns sprouting from its scalp, and Naru strongly suspected this deer was highly ranked among its pack.
Which was nowhere to be seen.
Naru chose to ignore the odd phenomena and quickly slid her backpack off her shoulders and set it down in the snow. "Ready..." she mumbled and lowered herself onto all four as she moved past the bushes. Tufts of thick, orange fur started blooming over her arms, and she parted her lips in a silent chuckle as she felt her canines start growing down past her lower lip and a tail sneak out from over the hem of her pants. "Steady..." By the time she'd prowled past the bush and into the glade, no one would've been able to tell she was human.
Just as she'd stepped into plain view, the deer raised its head and looked straight at her. They both stood equally still, scanning each other from head to toe, estimating each other. Then, Naru braced herself flat to the ground, inhaling deeply one last time before speaking the word, "Go.".
Her voice set the deer in motion, instantly sending it charging into the opposite direction. A growling laughter passed Naru's lips as even she burst into action, practically flying over the snow. The blood in her veins was quickly accompanied by adrenaline, and as she darted past the trees, she could hear her own heartbeat thundering in her ears, she could almost feel her nerves tingle with exhilaration.
Naru was faster than her prey. For each step, she gained on the deer, but however small the decrease in distance was, she chortled as if she'd already caught the poor critter. The race between her and her prey was never a long one, and when she saw the deer try and fail to make a swift turn, she knew the hunt was coming to an end.
She growled as she urged herself to move even faster, and after chasing the deer for a few more yards, her muscles tensed up as she braced herself for the kill, but she never got the chance to pounce before a piercing howl reached her ears.
A pack of wolves had sprung out of a nearby cluster of bushes, and the alpha male had leaped straight onto the deer's back and buried his fangs into its neck. A pained cry rose from the critter's throat and it stumbled. The momentum of the fall threw the wolf off its body, but the rest of the pack quickly dashed up to it and disabled its legs.
Naru watched with rising anger as the alpha male moved closer to the deer, teeth bared and ready to sever the jugular of the struggling animal, but just as he was about to sink his teeth into the soft flesh, Naru burst forward, a snarl rolling past her teeth as she charged straight at the alpha male with her head lowered.
Her brow connected with the wolf's ribs and sent it tumbling a good distance before it managed to break the skid and stand back up, emitting an outraged bark at the beast who'd intruded on his territory. The fur on his back stood up straight as he prowled closer to Naru, who stood equally ready to attack at any second. If the alpha wanted to fight, she was not one to back down.
The lesser wolves kept still, although growling loudly in an attempt to make Naru back down, but she ignored them. She knew they wouldn't dare to move unless given orders by their leader, and an alpha male would always challenge a worthy opponent by himself.
When he stepped too close, Naru released a menacing snarl, and moved sideways until she was standing over the deer. Mine. Though the alpha didn't like the action one bit at all, he showed it in no way other than increasing his growling, trying to make himself more intimidating. I'm higher up on the food chain, Naru thought and widened her stance, sucking in a lungful of breath and releasing it in an ear-shattering roar.
The effect was instant. The lesser wolves emitted high-pitched whines and scurried off as if electrified, and the alpha backed several steps. The two beasts glared at each other for several more seconds before the wolf finally gave up and turned around.
Naru waited until she could no longer hear the sound of the wolves' footsteps before releasing an exhilarated laughter and shaking her head, slowly but surely retracting her claws, teeth, her tail, and all fur on her body. She pushed herself from the ground, a satisfied smirk on her lips as she once again appeared human.
She snorted as she imagined the faces her fellow villagers would show if they could see her now, the first one in over ten years to hunt down a deer. She knew they'd be impressed, but they'd still try their best to cover it up. They'd refused to acknowledge her strength even when she had eaten the Zoan Devil's Fruit and gained the powers of Tiger.
Naru had come across the Neko Neko no Mi at the age of eight, when she'd gotten a sudden impulse to grow winter apples. She'd gone out to the land behind her house, and after four hours of digging and tilling through the snow and the frozen ground, she'd dug up a very strange-looking dark orange fruit with swirly patterns all over the peel. Hungry after all the hard work, she'd eaten the fruit without hesitation.
After getting over the horrible taste, a weird and uncomfortable feeling had filled Naru's body. In a state of shock, she'd sat still on a stool in her house for two hours, contemplating all possibilities for her state of health. She knew the fruit couldn't have been rotten, since in that case, she'd been sick, same went for an allergic reaction.
She'd ruled out every fathomable possibility before dragging her feet to the local library and opening a dusty register of Devil's Fruits. After thumbing through almost every page, she'd learned that what she had eaten was a fruit from the Cat family, a Tiger model specifically, one that would allow her to shapeshift into the legendary feline.
Naru chuckled as she remembered her very first attempt to transform, which had gone terribly wrong. Fur had started growing over her body, and she'd been too occupied with her new tail to remember her canines would grow longer as well. The razor sharp teeth had dug into her chin, resulting in two thin scars running from each corner of her mouth down to the end of her chin.
She'd scared the hell out of the doctor when she'd shown up at his house with claws, a tail, and a bleeding mouth. After getting over the initial shock, the doctor had quickly patched her up, and after questioning her about what had happened, he'd pointed out there was one thing he hadn't been able to fix.
The color of her eyes had shifted from blue to a yellowish orange. The doctor had said this must've been a side-effect from the Devil's Fruit she'd eaten, and they'd most likely never change back. Although slightly scared of her new powers, Naru had been comforted by the thought that maybe now the villagers would finally acknowledge her strength, but when the news of her newly gained ability, all it had done was earn her the extremely annoying nickname of "kitten".
Although she'd heard every day that a girl couldn't become the Pirate King, Naru had developed a theory of her own; if no one knew she was a girl, there shouldn't be a problem. With that in mind, she kept her hair short and messy, and made sure her mannerism was exactly like a boy's. Thanks to her training at the dojo, her arms were muscular and her chest stayed flat, and her body was slender and without curves. On the rare occasion her village had had a visitor, they'd always called her "lad" or "young man'".
She wore clothes that could've been made for both boys and girls. A thick and baggy black jacket protected her from the cold, white jean pants covered her legs, and sturdy, dark winter boots decorated her feet. She also tied a white scarf with brown speckles around her head as a bandana to keep her hair out of her eyes.
Naru had left Shimo Village about eight hours ago. She'd insisted on leaving in the middle of the night, so that for once, she'd be spared from the teasing and laughing. But when she'd left her house and trotted towards the southern exit of the village, she'd found the way blocked by the village elder. He had been the master at her dojo for as long as she could remember, and when she'd approached him, he'd scolded her for thinking she could sneak off without informing him first.
"Yeah, well, I didn't wanna set out with the words, 'Now you'll see you can't become the Pirate King'," she snapped and flicked her head as if to get rid of an annoying fly.
"You know they only mean well."
"Of course I do. But they still piss me off."
The elder chuckled. "I believe in you, Naru," he said and smiled. "You're strong, and not only as a fighter. I don't think I've ever met anyone with the same level of conviction and determination you have."
Naru smirked and bumped her fists together as the elder had taught her to do before every fight in the dojo. "Thank you, sensei," she said and saluted him with a respectful bow of the head.
"Off you go then, before any of the brutes wake up."
She nodded and turned her back to her master and her village. "When and if I return, I'll be the Pirate King," she said. "See you later, sensei."
"Take care of yourself, Naru."
Without bothering to look over her shoulder, she kept walking and simply raised her hand in a lazy goodbye gesture.