How would you AU Nami's backstory from One Piece?

[Doomed.Knight]

I'm working on a One Piece fic with a Sanji SI, and this is the part I'm stuck on. Because I want to still have the Straw Hat Pirates, I want them to be themselves, but not just redo the canon events.

Sanji is covered, given he's the SI.

Usopp is pretty easy to AU as well, given how tied his own story is to Luffy's. If Luffy is AU'd, he is automatically AU'd as well. No Straw Hat Pirates arriving at Syrup village, or arriving to late means Kuro succeeds. The whole village is wiped out, the Black Cat pirates are wiped out and he makes off with the cash. (Because what is he going to do with all that money alone on an island without even having anywhere to spend it?) We now have Usopp on a revenge arc, possibly using guns, maybe becoming a bounty hunter etc. Point being, that this is an easy and believeable deviation with strong future storytelling potential.

Zoro is also easy to AU because an AU for him already exists—his shared past with Saga from the Curse of the Holy Sword movie. So you can pretty much just make that canon with some tweaks. They could have some interesting future dynamics as well with Zoro being a pirate and Saga being a marine captain. Lots of storytelling potential.

Luffy himself also has many possible AU points. Maybe he doesn't eat the fruit. Maybe the whirlpool spits him out somewhere else. You can do almost anything with him and have it make sense.

Nami is the one I'm struggling with the most. You can't just have her not meet Bellemere and Nojiko for example, because her family and Cocoyashi village are such integral parts of her as a character. (Which is to say, the Nami we know is strongly shaped by the events of her life). The same goes for Arlong's role. You rip the Arlong Pirates out and you rip out a core part of what made Nami into the person we came to know.

You can't have Bellemere survive, because of how ruthless Arlong is. He's going to make an example of people who can't pay to make sure everybody else falls in line. The alternative is having Bellemere survive while Nami and Noriko die, (because they hade 100 000 berries, which was enough for one adult or two kids). I don't love this really because I want the Straw Hat Pirates to still exist.

You can't really have Nami and Nojiko escape to sea, because the anime states that the fishmen had already surrounded the island, and would've sunk any ships that attempted to flee.

Nami can't fight back because she's too weak. The marines are in Arlong's pocket and there aren't any pirates in the East Blue that'd be powerful enough to take down Arlong for a bribe. She also has the villagers to consider. I.e., she lashes out, the villagers get punished for it.

So the main issue the AU runs into is that there is really no point in doing an AU if it's so different that the original character is pretty much just erased outright. How do you AU Nami, while still having her be 'Nami'?

Considering the entirety of her history up to the point of meeting the Straw Hats, the most believeable part to me is having Nojiko and Nami die while Bellemere survives. Because why kill the adult that can make you money instead of the two useless kids? It's not like he knew Nami was such a good navigator at the point he decided to kill Bellemere. The Arlong Pirates only picked up on that after they had already killed Bellemere.

I'd really appreciate some feedback on this particular issue.

 

[NightmareWarden]

Make Bellemere and her daughters wake up, washed ashore, on a different island. Pick an island from the OP movies, perhaps. Come up with a REASON for them to wash ashore, one with arguments, battles, pirates... Or even weather! Perhaps it could be due to Shiki the Golden Lion's flying island or a family of monstrous birds flying past.

Make them wash up on an island with a different culture. Or a series of islands, perhaps; Arlong's fishmen can cross an archipelago's waterways faster than any boat! They can easily keep people across the islands divided, especially if you give him more mooks to really surround the ports.

You could also give Nami some sort of connection to the ship she left. Like, if she and her sister were on a ship that was a group of refugee ships? Then reconnecting with whatever's left of her homeland could be a thing.

You could also use the Rainbow Mists. Belemere and her daughters could be from 20-40 years in the past. Give the world government time to change the East Blue maps, and basically make Nami's homeland vanish from memory. An isolationist land with little ties to the rest of the sea, reduced to a myth. Perhaps a land with a very different idea for what merfolk and fishmen are! A land which can't be found, or perhaps was moved...? Who can say.


Additionally? Mermaids and mermen. If you use a different island/set of islands, then you could have a portion of Arlong's allies found an underwater village. A village which Nami might be able to aid during Luffy's arc on her island! You could connect that portion to her weather prediction, her own original tragedy with Belemere's stuff, or her skills as a thief. Or even, you could make it a fuck up from the rat-faced marine, meddling with forces he doesn't understand.