Chapter Cover AUs

What is this blog?

Starting today, once a day, this blog will post a chapter cover from One Piece and present a possible AU inspired by the given cover.

A more in-depth FAQ, tag lists and ‘about’ under the cut.

One of the few covers that just shows a scene out of canon. It’s nice.

AU: Party Planners

Yeah, they may be unconventional, but if you need a party organized, there’s no one in the world as good to contact as the Straw Hat Crew.

You will have to deal with their negotiator, and she will definitely get more money out of you than you were planning on spending, but it’ll be worth every penny.

It’s worth it to get to serve your guests food worthy of a five-star restaurant, to get music played by a world-renowned star, not to mention the show, or the locations. 

How do you choose which way to go in life, when you would like to have a moral compass, but the world has evil seeping through the crack at every turn, and you are so, so tired of being selfless.

Nami is on the side of bad conduct, because the side of justice has never given her anything.

AU: Hitchhiker

Nami has a lot to run away from, and a lot to eventually return to.

But none of that matters now.

She has her things carried on her back and the road ahead of her, a pretty smile for passing travellers and a hidden weapon for the less kind ones.

Nami has things to do and places to see, and her past is nobody’s business but her own.

In my biased opinion, this is the single best chapter cover in the series.

AU: Stand By

They’re not heroes. This world had heroes and villains, but they’re neither one.

They have their own things to do, and while they’re not opposed to getting involved with fights that get in their way, they’re more than content to stand on the sidelines and let the rest of the world deal with their own issues.

This may lead some to think they’re passive.

Or forgiving.

It may lead some to believe they can hurt one of theirs.

Oh, Oda, why do you hurt me so?

AU: Bellemere Lives

Maybe the weather was different that year. Maybe they got more for what they had to sell. Maybe they just had a little more money stowed away.

One way or another, Bellemere pays for her daughters, and she pays for herself, and they all live through Arlong’s initial appearance.

But they’re not safe, and they won’t be for a long time yet.

Nami still has skills the fishmen sorely want, and Bellemere, for all she left the marines, is still not the type to sit back and watch injustice happen.

This might be a radical opinion, but I don’t think zebras should smoke.

AU: Vineyard Keeper Sanji

It’s not a stretch to say wine-making is in Sanji’s blood. It’s in the name. The Vinsmoke family built their name and their fortune on vineyards.

But that was generations ago. Now, they’re on top of a tech empire, making an impact on the global scale, considering the skills they once had to be a thing  of the past, and not something to associate themselves with.

For Sanji, that very past is the only part of his family history worth holding onto, and he drops the name when he runs away from home to do his own thing.

It’s luck, maybe, that sees him picked up and cared for by a man who already the trade Sanji already loves.

Zeff is rough around the edges and foul-mouthed at best, but he gives Sanji everything he’s ever wanted and more than he could ever ask for. An apprenticeship, a home, a family, even.

But the past will never die, and in the end, it will always catch up with you.

It’s kind of interesting that there’s never been an explicitly wild-west themed adventure, but the aesthetic keeps coming back all over the place, what with the wanted posters and the style of some of the buildings and the guns and the bars. Probably a specifically wild-west adventure just wouldn’t feel unique enough.

AU continuation: Western

Roving bands of bandits are hardly unusual in this world of sand and bullets, but they’re usually not this... weird.

Usually there’s just gunslingers, not bonus swordslingers and fistslingers and legslingers.

And usually they’re not this friendly?

And usually they don’t help you overthrow the corrupt mayor and level half the town as they go, either.

This is just a very pretty chapter cover. The leaves in the wind, the hair on that passing girl, the framing and composition. I really like it.

It’s also nice to see what we can recognize from the paintings. Obviously the hideously priced portrait of Kaya (the only one with a written price) but there’s also the self-portrait on the left and the picture of the kids, and other than that, scenes from his home village, views of town or of the sea. It’s made so clear what he loves.

AU: Struggling Artist Usopp

Life as a penniless street painter is hard even for the self-proclaimed greatest artist in the world.

For Usopp, moving to the city to follow his dreams is the craziest thing he’s ever done, but now that he’s done it, he has to follow through. He can’t run back home just yet.

And... okay, he’s maybe not the greatest artist in the world, but it’s not a lie when he says he’s good. He knows that. Painting is one of the things he’s actually really good at.

It’s just that not a lot of people buy art off the street, even good art, so unless he gets a lucky break, his savings are going to keep dwindling and his income is going to stay at basically nothing.

What he needs is to either get discovered by some big, fancy gallery, or somehow find an apartment with much, much lower rent, and neither is likely.

Our dear boy Zoro seems to have lost his most beloved sword to a chicken. I’m not sure how this happened, but I suspect he’s very drunk.

AU continuation: Each Man for Himself

Zoro never intended to be a pirate.

In a world where he was never tied to a pole and starved, then nearly executed, it’s unlikely he’d ever be.

Zoro is only ever a swordsman. It’s his life and dream and reason to exist, to fight, and to get stronger.

He never intended to be a bounty hunter either. It’s not something he ever calls himself, it’s what others call him, because bringing in bounties every now and then is the easiest way to make money when you’re a monstrously powerful swordsman.

Which is why he’s not about to bring in every bounty he ever encounters. That was never the point.

He hardly shies away from it, even if some of his targets maybe don’t have it coming, because he’s still a ruthless bastard, but he picks his fights on other grounds.

It hardly matters anyway, to begin with. Luffy doesn’t have a bounty yet the first time they meet.

Luffy asks him to come be a pirate.

They take down a corrupt marine captain together.

Zoro says no.

And that’s that.

So Luffy was raised by owls. Wait, no, that’s a different story. 

And here we see teenage boys in their natural habitat. Climbing trees, looking out over the ocean. I don’t actually know how teenage boys work. I think that’s what they do?

AU: Boys’ Boarding School

One one hand, yes, they’re all orphans or abandoned to a greater or lesser degree, and it makes sense to put them somewhere they can be taken care of and also make friends.

On the other hand, why would you ever put this many agents of chaos in the same place at the same time? It was doomed from the beginning.

It takes them roughly three seconds to start causing trouble, for each other, for others, and for themselves.

These four find each other instantly, maybe recognizing fellow agents of chaos, and by the time anyone checks to see if all the new kids have gotten settled in their rooms, they’ve already climbed out the window to go exploring.

Luffy sneaks out to steal food from the kitchen, explores the surrounding area far beyond permitted borders and long after curfew, and regularly gets into fights.

Zoro tends to follow Luffy around on trouble, as well as disappearing on his own and ending up in places he really shouldn’t be, on accident, yes, but he very much claims it’s on purpose. He also tends to get into fights a lot.

Often with Sanji, who also has a bad habit of sneaking into the nearby girl’s school whenever he’s given the slightest opportunity, is rude to teachers and students alike and is a terrible enabler on top of all that.

This isn’t foreshadowing. I refuse to believe Wano was planned this early. It’s just because it looks cool, that’s all.

And this time they’ve given Luffy a sword. I think I preferred the hammer.

AU: Wandering Samurai

I don’t actually know enough about samurai to give this AU the weight it deserves.

The core concept is simple, however. Dangerous people wandering a dangerous world with dangerous weapons.

This particular group of people might not look all that dangerous at a first glance, but looks can be deceiving. 

This far, they have never lost a fight.

Of course, for the most part, the interesting part is simply watching them interact with their environment. Watching them meet people, and trick them, befriend them, or simply fight them. making silly shenanigans appear out of thin air wherever they go.

Chopper, is that you!?

AU: Santa Claus

It’s extremely early on Christmas Morning, and there’s roughly a gazillion presents ready to be delivered to children around the world.

Of course one man could never do the whole job on his own, and so an army of elves today take on the job as secondary santas to spread joy around the world.

At least they would, if they could stay awake.

One of the teams of mini-santas setting off this snowy night consists of two teenage boys who are to various degrees enthusiastic about getting out there for their first piece of real-life experience.

Luffy and Usopp have gone to santa school together for a few years now, and they might not have the best grades, or the best attendance, or the best behavioural record, and they may have a tendency to get into fights and play pranks on people and disappear in the middle of class to have entirely unrelated adventures, but they’re still... uh...

They’re not even remotely qualified for this, actually.

In fact, they weren’t even assigned their own sled. They just took one because they wanted to play a prank on their classmate and because they wanted to go out and be santa too.

Luckily for the children of the world, they’ll probably still get presents.

This border is really neat.

Anyway, back to these two.

AU continuation: Dishwasher

So Luffy’s stuck washing dishes on the Baratie and futilely trying to convince Sanji to join him in running away.

And the Baratie is stuck with Luffy breaking all their dishes, and desperately want him to take Sanji and run away.

At some point, a certain female pirate, somewhat famous in the area, makes a visit to the restaurant.

It goes fine for exactly twenty minutes, and only because Luffy’s on break to begin with.

He’s on break, and he’s outside, befriending the pirate crew’s kidnapped cabin boy.

Then all hell breaks loose.

Coby picks the fight. Alvida answers immediately and violently, and Luffy finishes it, decisively.

It’s a side of him the Baratie hasn’t seen before. They’ve seen him complaining and annoying, but this is Luffy facing down a powerful enemy for the sake of someone he’s just barely met. Once Alvida’s ran off, this is Luffy not even expecting or wanting a thank you from Coby, because he only did it because he wanted to in the first place.

This is Luffy where he shines best, and no one can help it changing their view of him.

This is also a chance to get the destructive menace off their restaurant, and more or less everyone jumps at the opportunity.

Two minutes later, Coby has offered on heavy prompting to thank Luffy by taking over his dishwashing duties for a while, and Luffy accepts because he wants to get out of here too.

Two hours later, Luffy’s on a small boat, leaving the ship, and somehow, Sanji is with him.

It takes a lot of coaxing to make that happen, but in the end, no one can resist Hurricane Luffy.

Just kids being friends. I love them :)

AU continuation: Farmhands

Usopp already spends most of the year working on the various farms in the village together with the travelling workers and the villagers.

He has a small house after his mother, but nothing more than a tiny garden, nothing to live on, so he has to work to earn his living. On the farms in the summers and on fixing things for people in the winter.

That’s fine. He’s a hard-working guy, and when he isn’t working, he’s telling stories for the kids and anyone else who will listen.

But he’s bored, and he’s lonely, and when one year a certain trio of travelling workers come by the village, he makes friends. And when they leave, he locks up his house, leaves the keys with a neighbour, and goes with them.

Luffy, how did you end up in this situation. Generally, you’re supposed to ride the bison. Is that a bison? Idk, it’s something. You’re supposed to ride it.

AU where Sanji was the first crew member

The Baratie is a ship. It sails around from place to place. In this AU, it happens to end up a lot closer to Dawn.

Luffy leaves home, gets hungry, and follows his nose to food.

He doesn’t wreck the place this time, but he eats his way through half the menu before anyone realizes he doesn’t actually have any money.

Oops.

So now he has to wash dishes. Except Luffy is very, very bad at washing dishes.

So now they’re stuck. No one wants to be in this situation. Luffy doesn’t want to be here, he wants to be out sailing.

And he wants Sanji to come with him.

The cooks certainly don’t want Luffy there, he’s more trouble than he’s worth, but they can’t throw him out now. He still owes them, and it’s on their pride.

And honestly, Sanji wants to go with Luffy too.

Except he doesn’t.

He does, but he doesn’t, and he’s just being very Sanji about it.

I had to splice this page together from two individual pages too. Almost didn’t notice I was missing half of it, with the way it looks. The most peculiar thing about this cover, though, is that it isn’t the first page of the chapter.

The first page of this chapter is Zoro getting bisected by Mihawk.

It’s also interesting how on the first chapter cover he appears in, Sanji isn’t necessarily framed as a Straw Hat.

AU: Each Man for Himself

Any AU that makes Luffy decide to run around on his own is of course wildly out of character. The boy needs people around him to survive.

But this is fanfiction. We can do what we want.

He’s rarely alone for long, anyway. As long as he can survive travelling from island to island, the moment Luffy sets foot in a town, he’s already making friends. That’s just the kind of man he is.

It’s fitting, really, for the man who will be king.

One of those friends is Nami, a pretty but self-centered thief wandering around looking for pirates to rob and islands to map. She finds Luffy annoying, but still counts him as one of her best friends, and he’s the first person she’ll call on in a pinch.

Another is Roronoa Zoro, technically a bounty hunter, and quite a famous one, but Luffy’s is one bounty he’ll never take. They like to stick together until one or the other gets lost and they go their separate ways.

The widely feared Captain Usopp has a crew of his own... though it’s quite a bit smaller than the 8000 men he likes to boast. He might be weak, but somehow, he never seems to lose a fight. Maybe because he only ever picks fights he knows he can win.

And finally, Black Leg Sanji is supposedly a restaurant owner. Anyone who ever meets him knows damn well he’s a pirate.

The best thing about chapter covers is that everyone gets to be happy and it’s lovely to see.

AU: Marines

Not my favourite kind of AU, but anything can be fun if you do it right.

Nami’s mother was a marine. She might have quit, but she was, and deep in her heart, she still is.

Imagine a world where she doesn’t die.

Where Nami grows up poor, yes, but safe and happy. Where she can learn her trade without the lives of everyone she’s ever loved constantly hanging over her head.

She quickly becomes the best cartographer this sea has seen, and is rapidly improving even beyond that.

Drawing a map of the world was always going to be her dream. It would always necessiate travel, going places people often can’t go.

Joining the marines seems like the logical step.

She’s not great at following orders and she’s hardly a soldier, but she doesn’t need to be. The marines want maps as much as anyone else, and so they give her everything she needs and wants, as long as she keeps drawing.

Nami is happy with that. She has no reason to complain.