Well, hello there! And here is to the beginning of a brand new story! I would like to start off of the bat with saying that I hope you guys enjoy this new One Piece romance with the ever sexy Law and would love to hear what everyone thinks of this chapter and the hopefully many more to come!

I do not own any of the characters within this story except for my OC's.

Enjoy! :)

Running.

Neither of them could stop.

If they stopped they died.

Or worse returned to their old life.

Freedom was all they wanted.

Freedom was all they needed.

Freedom was all they dreamed of.

So they ran.

The two girls ran.

And ran.

And ran.

Ignoring the branches that struck their bodies and the sticks that cut up their feet.

Pushed forward by the shouts of the men behind them.

The men chasing them.

One of the girls fell, her long blonde hair tangled in the branches behind her, now both of her knees skinned.

She wanted to give up.

She had no where to run.

Freedom had been just a dream for too long.

The red haired one would not let her stop.

She pulled the other girl up and together they ran.

"Catch her!"

"Where did she go!"

"This way, this way!"

"What about the other one?"

"Over here!"

"Wonder what's happening!" Rachel Windfall, mechanic of the Heart Pirates, commented around her large lollipop as she spoke to the other members of the crew.

"What do you mean?" Shachi, a member of that same crew, asked looking at the brown haired girl slightly confused.

"Well, don't you hear the shouting. I would've figured it meant pirates, but no one's chasing us yet." Rachel responded almost dropping the bags she was carrying as she attempted to make the motions with her hands as she normally did while speaking.

"Please refrain from dropping our supplies, Rachel." Trafalgar Law simply commented.

"Sure thing, Captain." Rachel commented cheerfully before hissing, "I don't see you carrying anything."

"I'm sorry." Bepo, who was carrying Law's share, wailed.

"Rachel." Law warned glaring back at her.

Rachel winced and apologized with a "Meow."

The Heart Pirates were walking down an alleyway carrying the supplies that they would need for their voyage to the next island. The shouting and footsteps came closer to them and Law silently held up his hand to stop all movement and sound. The last thing they needed was to be recognized by some marines and forced to fight. As pleasant as fighting was, Law was simply not in the mood.

Suddenly a small figure dashed into the alley in front of them and then froze. With the moon currently behind the clouds the figure was in complete shadow. The person started to take a few steps backwards but stopped again when the shouting voices came closer.

The moon's light was freed from the clouds just in time for the Heart Pirates to see the girl completely as she looked back at them. Shachi and Penguin quickly gasped and Rachel attempted to cover her mouth (her hands were still full). Bepo took a step behind his captain who simply stood there in silence.

The girl was beautiful, but injured. Her clothes which had already been rags were almost shredded and covered in blood. Most of her visible skin was either bruised or cut. Both her knees were skinned and an injury to her elbow was causing blood to drip down her arm. Her long blonde hair was a horrible tangled mess and her feet were so badly injured it was a wonder she was still standing. But these were not the two main things that the Heart Pirates noticed.

Rachel, Shachi, Penguin and Bepo were staring at her face, framed by her messy hair, and with the right side badly bruised. The feature that stood out the most in the darkness were her blue eyes, terrified and darting around as she tried to find a way to escape.

Law's eyes were locked on something else, her wrists. More specifically the barbed wire tattoos.

The tattoos that marked her as a slave.

The silence lasted only seconds but appeared to last for eons. Law was the first to move as he grabbed Penguin's hat off of the unexpecting boy's head.

"Captain!" Penguin gasped running his hand through his black hair surprised by this action.

Law ignored him. "You're a slave." He commented to the blonde girl in front of him as he took a few steps forward ignoring the gasps behind him. The girl took a few steps backward, but stopped as she couldn't go further without going back into the light of the street and in front of the men who were looking for her. Law kept on slowly moving, his hat shadowing his eyes. "Those men are looking for you, which means you ran away."

He stopped right in front of the girl looking down at her. He, at about 6'3"*, towered over the much smaller girl. "Miss Slave, do you wish to be saved?"

The girl hesitated, frightened by the man standing in front of her, slowly nodded.

"Good answer." Law smirked, and pulled off his hoodie. The girl, surprised by his sudden movement, barely reacted when he pulled it down on her and messily plopped Penguin's hat on her head. Law's hoodie was basically a dress on the girl, and Penguin's hat covered most of her face. Law grabbed her arm and pulled her forward turning to the others only to state "Let's go."

Once the girl tried to resist from the direction they were going, towards the men she had been running from, Law leaned in a whispered, "Stop fighting it, they aren't going to look that closely at you." Silently the Heart Pirates surrounded the escaped slave girl until she, at glance, appeared to simply be one of their own.

* according to One Piece Wikia who cited their sources as the Manga Volume 68, page 82 in which Law's official height was revealed, along with the other Supernovas, as 191 cm or 6'3ΒΌ"

The crew walked down the main street in silence and soon came around a group of men standing in a circle. One of them looked up at the incoming group and took a step forward.

With his movement it was revealed what, or whom, the men were standing around. It was the other slave that the girl currently being led forward by Law had escaped with. She laid crumpled on the ground, her red hair across her face.

The man who moved loudly asked, "Excuse me, mates, but would any of ya happened to have seen a young blonde girl running in these parts?"

Law curtly replied, "No," his eyes locked on the girl on the ground in front of them. "What happened to her?"

The man glanced back and shrugged with a reply of, "She fell and broke her neck. If any of ya happen to see the girl we're looking for, give a shout, will ya?"

Law curtly nodded, his grip tightening around the thin arm of the girl shaking next to him. She was looking straight down trying to not look at the crumpled body of the girl who had saved her life.

As the crew walked by the man turned back to the others and one of them sighed, "The master is going to kill us. One dead and one missing. And he spent good money on those bitches too."

The Heart Pirates silently quickened their pace out of town and to their sub with the young slave girl in tow.

Rachel glanced at Shachi and Penguin, the three of them having a silent conversation. They had left the town and were crossing the beach to get to where their submarine was submerged offshore. The poor girl, who was now being carried in Law's arms as he apparently wanted her off of her injured feet, was quietly crying behind them.

The girl was a slave, and one of the first times Law actually went out of his way to help someone. He had returned Penguin's hat, who after all felt very uncomfortable without it, but kept the shivering girl in his hoodie, a rarity that he did not have on.

The three Heart Pirates knew one thing and it was that there was something special about this girl.

Their grand yellow submarine* appeared from under the water and a small row boat quickly was rowed by some of the other crew to take them aboard**.

As soon as Law stepped upon the deck he gave the order "Ready the infirmary," and carried the young injured slave to within his vessel.*

*The submarine of the Heart Pirates has yet to be named in either the manga or the anime.

** I am making an assumption of that this is how the Heart Pirates travel to their ship in general because it is not logical to have it so close to the beach like often in the One Piece world.

And that is a wrap of the first chapter of my brand new story, Death's Darling Angel. What did you guys think? Reviews of all sorts are much appreciated!

Lots of love!

Miss XO out, shipping someplace else! Cheers! :)