The fisherman gave another tug, and hauled the net up out of the ocean as the sea salt stung his eyes. Wiping the tears away with one sun-browned hand, he gave a glance back towards the shoreline, now only a hop-skip-and-a-jump away. The trawler had been out all night, and had come back with a nice haul. Now he could finally head home, get a nice shower, a hot meal, and some much needed rest.

"HEEEEEEY MIIIIIISTEEEEEER!!"

He turned; was someone calling to him? Who could it be, out here on the water at such an early hour? Another night-fisher coming in? 

No. It was a boy, in a dinghy. A...very fast dinghy. A very fast dinghy that was approaching more and more quickly, even though the boy had no oars, and in fact was clinging to the boat and leaning back, his legs rigid in front of him like a toboggan rider who was trying desperately to put his heels into the snow. A nervous smile plastered his face.

"DO YOU KNOW HOW TO MAKE REVERSE THRUST?"

"Reverse what?!" the man shouted, just before he ducked under the awning near his ship's cabin. The dinghy shot by like a bullet, the young man's screams doppler-ing into the distance. The fisherman could have sword he saw a...large hole of some kind, spewing rocket fire, coming right out of the youth's back!

"ME NEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIITHEEEEEEEEERRR!!"

And so Zehst Messerschmitt came to Loguetown, though not at all in the fashion one might have imagined. The rocket propelled dinghy hit the sand and kept going, its hull shedding timbers as it ramped up off a dune and sailed into the air. Zehst looked around in awe at all the houses--the villages back on the Gecko Islands hadn't been near this big--then remembered he was falling out of the sky at something like a hundred and twenty miles an hour.

He'd finally figured out how to make the rockets come out wherever and whenever he wanted. Now he had to figure out how to put on the brakes. He supposed he could always just...turn them off?

Of course, by the time he came to this conclusion--having crossed his legs and put one hand on his chin, nodding sagely--he had already plowed through a line of laundry, an extremely alarmed cat, and some poor old man's cabbage cart. With bits of vegetable and an angry cat clinging to his face, he looked up with a grin and snapped his fingers. The rocket was sucked back into his flesh with a "shwoop" sound, and the boat began to gradually slow down. Of course, by this time there wasn't much left of it save the seat that Zehst was sitting on. As the momentum began to die off the boy found himself spinning in circles, then ricocheting off an uneven cobblestone to crash through the wall of someone's shop.

"Aha-cough! It did--huck, hagh, ew cat hair--it did work! Zehst my man, you're two for two today!"

As the dust and wood chips cleared, Zehst stood up with the cat from before now held in his outstretched arms and several new, apparently unnoticed, scratchmarks turning his face into bloody hatchwork. He looked around the crash site and spotted several people and an old man. One of the big guys had a nose ring. 

"Hey, uh...I don't suppose you guys know where I could get a new boat, do ya?" he asked, nervously throwing the cat over his shoulder. It let out a loud yeowl, then in the distance there was the sound of someone's garbage being scattered and glass breaking.