#arthrobug

Version with borders because dramatism my beloved

I picked angst over domestic fluff for some reason zxcvbnm- I usually like fluffy things HELLA more (give me happy beginnings and ending mfers I'm soft) but I was possessed by this and had to do it

Okay silly lore I thought of since I'm free now-

The only ones swapped are Koby and Luffy, and I also adore the Rocks D. Koby AUs so of course I alluded to that lmao, and basically Luffy is just the most unhinged Marine you've ever fucking seen 💀

Rumor that Xebec had a descendant got out a while before Koby was born, around the time Roger was executed. Koby was soon involuntarily abandoned after he was born, since his parents got found out and killed by Marines. He was taken into the care of a communication line of fishermen, who found out Koby's bloodline pretty quickly, but decided to keep it a secret. He was passed island to island to keep his existence a secret (oh hey sorta like Luffy lol), but he was still kidnapped by Alvida at 14. However, Koby was aware of his lineage and was already trained in how to defend himself, and he managed to escape only after a few weeks, albeit badly injured. By pure coincidence, he ran into Red-Haired Shanks, who decided to give Koby some medical attention before dropping him off someplace. In the time they knew each other, Shanks decided to give Koby -instead of his whole hat- the red ribbon attached to his strawhat to Koby. Koby still wears the ribbon as a bandana to this day.

Luffy never met Shanks in this AU, and Garp drilled Marine ideology into his grandson's head harsher than ever, but it of course didn't stick right, and Luffy interprets it in bizarre ways. Luffy is still extremely motivated to find the One Piece, but not to become the King of the Pirates. He just wants to out of spite and boredom.

Luffy and Koby met during the timeskip, about a year after Ace had been wrongly executed. In that time, Koby had become a prominant pirate from both his name and his grandfather's. People assumed he was after the One Piece as well, and they weren't wrong, but Koby's real reason to find the One Piece was to end the era of pirates, not to become King. Luffy had been on a sort of off-site probation after he tried publicly saving Ace (to keep him out of the public's eye/to forcefully make him cool down/to make people believe he was dead), and ran into Koby. Luffy was briefed who Koby was, but couldn't care less, and became good friends with him extremely quickly.