Years have passed since their incident with Kizaru and the hunter pirates faking their deaths. Lila and Ronin grew to be incredible fighters, they had the confidence to stand on their own and didn't want to keep relying on the brothers to protect them.
For unknown reasons, Koby and Te wanted to stay in the East Blue. So Lila and Ronin continued their exploration to the Grandline, and as a gift—an unwilling gift, but a gift—Koby and Te gave them the ship to keep.
Thankfully, Koby developed a new Nen ability similar to the Knov hide-and-seek and Minato Flying Raijin techniques. It allowed him to travel to a separate dimension and bring things with him, so he stored all their inventions and equipment inside of it. It also allowed him to bypass going through the dimension and outright teleport to one of his Nen markers.
The ability was quite convenient but difficult to explain to his friends since Te and he just said their abilities came from a special devil fruit that didn't give them the usual side effects. As they developed more Nen abilities over the years.
Lila and Ronin had no reason to suspect them of lying since they had known the brothers most of their lives, and if it wasn't for them they would still be on greed island living mundane lives following the career paths of their parents.
Chalking it up to their strange devil fruit not many questions were asked.
So now Koby and Te were in Shell Town a day before Luffy should arrive. If no changes were made to the original timeline so far, their plan to meet him should go off without a hitch.
The brothers were excited to meet and adventure with Luffy especially Te since he was a one piece stan. Koby more or less didn't care as much as he wanted to start his own crew and explore the world, but he didn't have any ambition to find the one piece and become Pirate King.
Koby following his former life dream of becoming an engineer, now in the one piece world it was to become the world's greatest inventor/engineer. Since following Luffy didn't hurt his dream if not probably helped it, he followed his best friend now brother to join Luffy's startup crew.
Sitting at a restaurant in town, the place was almost dead inside, like everyone's mood was shot. Behind the counter, the boys could see a little girl asking an older woman to teach her how to make rice balls. Other people in the restaurant were constantly glancing at the door as if waiting for someone to come inside.
Te leaned back in his chair, scanning the place. "Man, this place is depressing," Koby muttered, crossing his arms. His eyes flicked toward the door, noting how every customer seemed to be doing the same.
Te smirked. "You're telling me. It's like Captain Morgan turned this place into his personal nightmare zone. Feels like a pirate den."
Koby raised an eyebrow. "Morgan? More like a tyrant. Maybe we should just deal with him now, save everyone the trouble."
Te shook his head. "Nah, if we take him out too early, Zoro won't have a reason to join Luffy's crew."
Koby's brow furrowed. "Right… I kinda forgot how that all plays out. Been years since I watched this arc."
Te gave him a mock look of superiority. "Lucky for you, I've rewatched it enough to remember every detail."
Koby snorted. "No life."
"Shut up," Te shot back, smirking.
"Just saying," Koby teased.
Te rolled his eyes and leaned forward. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. Knowing Luffy, all we have to do is say hi, and he'll be begging us to join his crew."
Koby chuckled. "Yeah, sounds about right." He glanced at the door one last time, sensing the shift in the air. "Let's hope he shows up soon. This town could use a bit of chaos to shake things up."
Te getting up from his seat. " Let's go say hi to Zoro."
"Alright, there's nothing better to do anyway." Koby agrees with Te and gets up from his chair.
Before leaving Te grabs a a few sheets of blank paper from his pockets, activates his E.E(equivalent exchange) turns the sheets of paper into a berries 10000 in fact and hands it to the lady at the counter.
The lady looked at the amount Te handed her and was shocked to see this amount of money in her hand. At first, she was very grateful, but the realization of the Marines probably coming later to most of the money from her made her quite fearful. "Sir you overpaid, here take your change."
Te shook his at the woman trying to hand him his money back. " No, it's quite alright, and you don't have to worry about the Marines trying to take it. They won't be a problem for much longer."
Tears started to form in the woman's eyes, she was quite thankful to this stranger. " Thank you, Sir," bowing her head.
"Don't put too much thought into it," Te said waving the woman off.
Te and Koby both headed out the door and once they were outside they both headed to the marine base where they knew Zoro was being held outside for public humiliation.
As they made their way down the vendor-lined street, Koby broke the silence. "You know, once Nami finds out you can turn paper into money, she'll probably never let you out of her sight. She'll lock you up and turn you into her personal ATM."
Te chuckled. "Hahaha, very funny. That's exactly why this stays between us."
Koby smirked but raised an eyebrow. "Should we really be keeping secrets from our future crewmates?"
Te shot him a mischievous look. "Maybe I'll tell Luffy and Usopp you're wearing a robot suit."
Koby narrowed his eyes. "Go ahead, but you're wearing one too."
"I can turn mine into scrap metal before you even finish that sentence," Te retorted with a smug grin.
Koby faltered, his shoulders sagging. "B-but… Fine, no mention of this."
Te grinned triumphantly. "Deal."