if even the man's lips were covered with a touch of ice.So he had devil powers. She could have guessed that from such a creepy guy. The rumors of the villagers came back to her mind. A mysterious cargo ... It wasn't ...?

The kitchen door swung open and the bartender placed another bowl of steaming rice on the counter.

"So, please, gentleman. Oh, so you've finished your beer after all. I assure you, that really never happens with us ..." he said eagerly when he saw the empty beer glass.

"No topic ...", the person addressed grumbled, wiped his mouth with an inconspicuous movement and greedily attacked the rice.

That was their chance. The guy would be busy eating for a while. Bunny snuck out of the bar as quietly as possible. As soon as she was on the street, she quickened her pace and took the direct route to the harbor.

Even if she hadn't known the other ships, she would have known immediately which of them belonged to the stranger.It had the same eerie atmosphere as its owner. It was agile and not very big and made of dark wood. The sails were made of a dark red fabric and Bunny noticed that this ship was not carrying a flag. She looked around uncertainly. She couldn't see anyone nearby. Even the jetty was extended. Well, if that wasn't an invitation ... Bunny quickly slipped onto the strange ship. Where should she start looking? Nothing conspicuous was to be seen on deck, so she opened the door to the lower deck and slowly went down the narrow stairs. She entered a small cabin, which was lit by the light of a few small torches. The stranger really didn't seem to want to stay here long, even if he had left the light on. But at the moment that was a very convenient circumstance. In the dark she would never have found her way in this mess. On a heavy oak table, countless notes and nautical charts were scattered around and the chest of drawers next to it was almost overflowing with scrolls and scraps of parchment.There had to be a chest or something somewhere. Bunny looked around and saw the flag she had missed earlier hanging on the wall to her right. It was a skull flag, but the skull was not white like on ordinary pirate flags but had a bluish shimmering color, so that it looked like it was carved out of ice. He was also surrounded by some ice crystals. He really was a pirate. No wonder she was attracted to this man almost magically from the start. Had he not been so scary to her, she could have been tempted to ask him if she could go with him. There was a picture next to the flag. The photo was already quite faded, but you could see two men who were obviously good friends. The left of the two was very tall and strong and Bunny was sure that he was the mysterious owner of this ship, even if he was not wearing a cloak in this picture and looked really happy because of the wide grin on his face.Without the hood over his face, you could see three blue stripes on each of his cheeks. Did they come from the power of the devil's fruit? Bunny's gaze fell on the other man, who was jokingly poked his friend in the side and looked as if he was laughing out loud. He was almost a head shorter than the stranger, had bright red hair and wore a yellow straw hat. Bunny knew that hat ... Yes, and she also knew the man who wore it. He was a little younger than she remembered, but it was definitely the red Shanks. The pirate who had settled in their village with his gang for a while. Bunny had been quite young at the time, but she could still clearly remember how infatuated Luffy had been with this guy. He had always hung out with the boys in the tavern and sometimes cheered and sometimes just annoyed them with his jokes. Shanks had even saved his life once and Luffy had been very sad when the pirates broke down their tents after a few weeks to move on.As a farewell, Shanks had entrusted the little boy with his straw hat, which Luffy has guarded like the apple of his eye ever since. With a grin, Bunny remembered how she had often stolen his treasure from his head while he was sleeping, driving him to white heat.

And it was around the time Luffy was nibbling on the gum-gum fruit. On the one hand, Bunny had been enthusiastic about her brother's new abilities, on the other hand, the jealousy had always gnawed at her when she had to watch him keep training her and become stronger and stronger. He had proudly boasted that he could finally take on Ace, who was an extremely tough opponent even without the help of devil forces. Bunny had always got on well with her brothers, but she was simply inferior to them physically. How much she had wished to be a boy because of that, but when she watched the two of them at one of their burping competitions, the whole thing didn't seem to be such a great idea.But if she would find such a devil fruit now, she would finally have enough strength to make her long-cherished dream come true.

Without thinking further about the possible connections between Shanks and the stranger, she hastily searched the floor of the cabin. Something just had to be found here! And indeed, after seemingly endless rummaging around, she discovered a wooden box under a pile of thick books that had been carelessly thrown under the packed table. The disenchantment followed immediately when Bunny had to find out that it was locked with a lock. But she wouldn't give up that easily, and when she saw a broad sword lying next to the table, an idea occurred to her. She grabbed the gun and after a few failures, each time wincing and listening anxiously for possible noises from outside, she had managed to pick the lock. With trembling fingers she opened the lid of the box and looked inside.It was like a dream. Inside were five strange-looking fruits in various colors. Direct hit !! Now all she had to do was choose one. The yellow fruit, which resembled a somewhat jagged banana, caught her eye immediately. Bunny took it in hand and looked at it from all sides. She was already a little queasy. How should she know if these were really real devil fruits? What if some of those things had terrible side effects? Maybe she would get such streaks on her face, or worse ... maybe she would suddenly grow a tail or something ... But so close to the goal they shouldn't be deterred by such horror ideas. She quickly let the yellow fruit disappear into her jacket pocket and tried to fasten the broken lock again so that you couldn't immediately see that it had already been cracked once. Carefully she pushed the box back to its old place and slowly crept up the stairs to the deck.Fortunately, there was still no one to be seen. Bunny is almost surprised that the stranger hadn't surprised her during this action. Maybe he had gone somewhere else after his meal ...

That was the day Bunny got her devil powers. As it turned out, the strange yellow fruit was a thunder fruit that gave the girl the ability to generate electricity. At first she had only managed to shoot tiny lightning bolts from her hand, but with a little practice she had been able to increase the amperage a lot and was now even able to use her lightning bolts in a targeted manner. She had also found that she was able to magnetize objects by means of electrical charges, which was really helpful in some situations.

How much she would have loved to demonstrate her new skills to her brothers, but the two had been gone for a while and hadn't called in since then.They were probably too busy going on exciting adventures and didn't think about them at all. But Bunny was quite sure that she would see the boys again pretty soon ...

A knock in the ribs rudely pulled her out of her thoughts.

"Hey Bunny, stop sleeping. The bulldog is looking at you venomously again.", Hina whispered and tried to shake her inattentive friend's arm unobtrusively.

"Since you are paying no attention to my teaching whatsoever I assume you already know everything I've been talking about in the last sixty minutes. Would you mind telling your classmates about the different functions of the stream of consciousness in modern English literature?" hissed Miss Bullworth, glancing at Bunny over the edge of her large glasses that would have caused severe mental disorders in a very sensitive person.

Since poor Bunny hadn't understood a word of what had just been said, she worked up a sweat and even a furtive glance at her neighbor only earned her a helpless shrug."Okay, .... I would say that… uh… there is always very bad weather in England…. And because of that…. Mmhh… a lot of people wrote many books to have something to do when they can't go outside ... ", she stammered desperately and felt how she got herself into more trouble with each word.

Apparently, Bunny and Miss Bullworth did not have the same idea of ​​humor, because after a loud lecture and a hefty detention, the student found herself at the door of the classroom.

Since the bulldog would tell the headmaster about her "unheard-of behavior" anyway, Bunny felt it was completely unnecessary to torment herself that day and so she decided to skip the rest of the day. After all, you could use your time much better ...

Backstage: Phew !! Finally I have all the exams behind me and I get to put pleasant things on paper again ^^ This chapter has become quite long again for my circumstances.Anyway, I seem to be increasing quantitatively. I then let my willing audience decide about the quality ...

As already mentioned at some point, there is also a drawn version for the beginning of this story, which I have not yet adhered to at all. How did I manage to write almost 20 pages without even describing a single picture of the Doji? Well, but from the next chapter on I have to start with the actual plot of the story. ^^

I had a lot of fun including the English lesson at the beginning of the story. Actually, I would have preferred French because this language annoys me a lot more, but it might have been strange if the teacher had built so many