Cappello di Paglia

Chapter 1

For years, things in the Six Districts—East Blue, North Blue, West Blue, South Blue, Paradise, and New World—were relatively peaceful, everyone coexisting peacefully with the individual Mob Families that watched over the territories that resided in the separate Districts. Yes, the Mafia. Gangs, of course, had risen up in the smaller cities and towns across the Districts, but everyone knew who really ran everything that went on behind the scenes, who the ones that pulled the strings were, and that was the Mob Families.

It'd been twenty-two years since the Capo di tutti Capi (Boss of All Bosses), Gol D. Roger, died by execution. Any protégés he left behind had long since fled, either going into retirement or hiding, or establishing their own power by claiming territories of their own. These protégés had all since aged, and one in particular was now a Capo di Capi Re (King Boss of Bosses, a respected senior), but that's another story for another time.

There were the Four Capo di Capi Re, who mainly ruled over the New World District (the largest and most influential one), that made up the "older generation" of the Mafia; these were the Families who'd either been around since Roger's time or started right after Roger's death. Some of the Capo di Capi Re didn't really care about becoming the Capo di tutti Capi, more content with running their territories and doing their own things, while the others wanted nothing more than to become Capo di tutti Capi. This was where the problems began.

The gap Roger's death created left space for the smaller, starter Families to rise up, and that was just what they'd been doing.

Besides the Four Capo di Capi Re, there was another group that stood at the top: the Nine Supernovas. They consisted of the newer generation of the Mafia, the upstarts who had quickly made a name for themselves. These Family names were known all over—whispered in fear, admiration, or disgust, but always with respect.

But even among the Supernovas, there stood three Families that had gained even more recognition and infamy, known among the other Families and the FBI as the "Three Terrors". These three Families were the Heart Family, the Kid Family, and the Straw Hat Family. This was where our story began, when two of those Families decided...to form an alliance.

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"LUUUUUFFFFFYYYY!!!!!" a highly panicked voice echoed through the Mansion as the front door was slammed shut and two sets of feet came running to the kitchen.

Sitting at the kitchen table, scarfing down plates of food as fast as they were placed in front of him, sat 25-year-old Monkey D. Luffy—just a squirt; some say a kid in the world of men. But this "kid" had dreams, and the guts and power to back them up. When he said he wanted to be the Capo di tutti Capi, he meant it, and everyone who heard him knew it. Though he's so young, he was still the Boss of his own Family, known to everyone as the Straw Hat Family, and his territories mainly consisted of the East Blue District, as well as some from the Paradise District.

He's 5'8½" and had mediumish, messy raven black hair with choppy, sporadic fringe, wide, round chocolate brown eyes that always gave off an innocent shine, light tan skin, and a lean, muscular body; he also had two visible scars: a horizontal scar with two stitches underneath his left eye and a large X-shaped burn scar over his chest. Hanging from a chin-string over his shoulder blades, like always, was his straw hat with a red ribbon circling it; he went nowhere without this hat, given to him by a very special person, which was how he got his epithet: "Straw Hat".

When Luffy was six, he accidentally ate the Gum-Gum Devil Fruit and gained the properties of highly-stretchable rubber. Combined with the elasticity of his body, he used this ability to accelerate parts or the whole of his body, as if shot by a slingshot, to deliver punches, kicks, head butts, body checks, or simply for propulsion. In addition to his Devil Fruit powers, he's a master in Karate, Taekwondo and Kung-Fu, though had proven time and time again to be a highly adaptive combatant, extremely agile and acrobatic, and excelled in all three variations of Haki (Observation, Armament, Conqueror's). Taking all of this into account, as well as his familial relations, the FBI and World Government had given him a bounty of 580,000,000 berries.