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Language:
English
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Published:
2024-01-05
Updated:
2024-11-14
Words:
58,078
Chapters:
15/?
Comments:
40
Kudos:
78
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1,997

What Makes a Man

Summary:

Franky dies at Laugh Tale in service of the King of the Pirates. In the days following the fight, Robin finds a closet full of tone dials describing her partner's final wish in perfect detail: to rebuild the Battle Franky. Two years of pain and isolation pass as the Straw Hats discover her endeavor one by one. Finally, on one dark and stormy night, lightning cracks and the cyborg rises again. But a sacrifice must be made in equal exchange, stranding the pirate crew on a remote island off the edges of the map.

Now, Robin must figure out exactly what it means to love a creature of her own creation, and Franky must figure out what it means to be alive. The way home lies in repairing Sunny, but will the shipwright remember who he is before time runs out?

Chapter 1: The Sound of No One Laughing

Notes:

Preface:
Before I start I just wanted to offer a bit of a peak behind the curtain from a creative perspective. So a few months ago when I started writing again, my first OP fic was one that I've since deleted because I just wasn't very happy with the result. I hadn't yet gotten a grasp both on the characters and my own writing strengths. The story just didn't properly explore the ideas I had set out to look at. Then, I had originally wanted to write a short set of side stories to that first fic in order to practice writing my smut, but then Staying Right Here formed and became a much bigger monster than I'd ever anticipated. And I learned a lot from writing all that (and I'm still not done! No where close!), but I also felt a little sad that I'd abandoned my original idea out of embarrassment over the final product. Thank you to @mamano for seeing the potential sliver of something good in the work that I couldn't even look at. It means a lot. So I took the pieces that I still really liked from that story and stitched them into an entirely new fic that I feel so, so much better about. Like some sort of 19th century monster who's name I can't remember off the top of my head but who also never had a name to begin with. That's all to say, if you're reading the first two chapters going "hang on this seems familiar," then congrats on being one of the like, 10 people who read that original work. This is something very different and also kind of similar. I've learned that I need to have more pride in the things I create.

Parts of this story will drop in Acts. This is Act 1, the first 10 chapters.

Chapter Text

Act 1: Theseus’s Shipwright- Chapter 1: The Sound of No One Laughing

 

In the end, there was only ever going to be one King. But the battle for his victory had not been kind nor without sacrifice. The memories of hard won fights still flashed behind Robin’s eyes whenever sleep refused to come. That beautiful, horrible, bloody, and thrilling end of the line. Laugh Tale beneath their boots, every enemy that had previously stood before them bearing witness to the ascension of the King of the Pirates. A day that permanently set darkness into the faces of of her young nakama, cursed now with a poison in their blood that could never be fully let out. They were viciously victorious, but the sacrifices had been great. Bloodshed wasn’t foreign to these pirates, but more than just blood was spilled across the battlefield.

Zoro was buried first. They had found a high point on a hill, one that looked over his final battleground, with a clear view to the sea to the west. His swords were erected like a triad burst over the mound, a permanent reminder to the world that the spirit of the greatest sword master would lay forever in this haunted land. When the sun set, the light caught the sharp angles of the katanas, illuminating the metal like a bright solar flare. He would eternally be the north star for those who sought victory on the hellish road he had carved. His sacrifice served as a beacon to others. His love and sense of duty for his captain unrivaled until the very end.

There had been no such burial for Franky, however. The first wave of the explosion he’d unleashed tore deep craters into the earth and the heat scorched kilometers away from the epicenter. As the sound barrier broke, Robin could feel in her heart and her gut that this time wasn’t going to be like their past battles. There was no surviving. No hand of god to pluck him back up.

“Wait here, this next attack’s going to be, well, y’know,” he had declared with a wink before driving off to face his foe. He hadn’t given her time to protest, but she knew him well enough that it was obvious he was hiding a few extra emotions behind those goggles. The force from the explosion sent her to her knees and blistered her skin, despite being as far from the source as she could possibly have been. Doubtlessly intentional.

Bile rose in her throat with the black mushroom cloud curling out from the center of the battlefield. Pillars of flame licking through the tree of knowledge. Her home consumed by fire. Her home consumed by fire once more. The fury of the Devil ripped through her heart and her anger knew no end. Only in victory did her eyes begin to clear and her mind sober to the waves of carnage.

In anger’s subsistence, a grief possessed her bones and she wandered the battlefield for days, extra eyes and hands combing the rubble for a flicker of candy-colored carbon fiber. But in the end, all she could find were scraps. There was no such burial for Franky, but he probably would have wanted it that way. A man escaping death for the better part of a decade wasn’t about to rest peacefully. It just wasn’t his style.