It's the job of the captain to pick the crew, and the duty of the first mate to test them for worthiness. How Zoro came to accept each of the straw hats as nakama.

Imagine person A making person B a friendship bracelet, expecting person B to never wear it, but when it’s given to them person B puts it on and is rarely seen with it off. A group of marines charge, Zoro slices through them, and in that instant Sanji feels his own eyes grow wide. Because there, on the arm now outstretched towards him, steel glinting in hand, is the stupid bracelet he’d given Zoro. The bastard is actually wearing it.

You know how this is going to go.

Sanji's cooking has reached a whole new level. It's almost uncanny. Especially when his thoughts and emotions somehow get into the mix along with the rest of the ingredients.

At Shells Town, Luffy does not meet Roronoa Zoro. Instead, he acquires a sword.

The light overhead isn't from Minion island's overcast sky but instead a steel plated ceiling shining down fluorescence, glass and plastic bottles rattling on shelves against the walls. Everywhere there's monitors and familiar machinery and the distinct tang of antiseptic, sharp beyond the memory sense of blood and snow. For half a second Law looks at it all very blankly and thinks, What The Hell. Is he dreaming. Is he hallucinating. Is he just plain dead. His sight-line completes the rotation of this impossibility to fall upon speckled jeans and a long sweeping coat. And the man standing in front of Law has the blankest expression Law's ever seen. And the man standing in front of Law has Law's father's face. Underneath Law's blood-slicked fingers, Cora-san's pulse shudders. (This is a story where the past and the present collide. Wherein thirteen year old Trafalgar Law and twenty-six year old Rocinante tumble sideways through time-space via the blue desperation of a newly eaten devil fruit, from Minion island to a future distant. Right, unwittingly, onto the submarine deck of a another Law shortly after Doflamingo’s fall.)

Waking up two years before their adventure even began was a surprise. The Straw Hats have to find each other again and make their way back to the New World and their dreams. Dealing with younger, weaker bodies and the weight of future knowledge they will find it's not as easy as a simple do-over. Every change has an effect on themselves and on the world. This story will quickly diverge from cannon. It will mix up, move around and ignore entire arcs. These guys are not looking for a boring adventure when they already have answers. What's the point in doing it all the same?

It’s funny, Robin notes as she sits on the deck of the Thousand Sunny, book in hand, That the people who are called Demon, Monster, Devil aboard this ship of dreams are not the true Monsters. No, she thinks, watching her crew as they spend the day on the deck of the Sunny, Not monsters at all. - Or: The East Blue has a different nickname to those in the Grand Line, and those who hail it as home have a few... unique traits.

At first, Zoro thinks Nami's just hungover.