Before you start reading, there are several things I'd like to point out about this story:

1- Despite the amount of OCs in here, there is only one main OC character, and only one Canon x OC pairing, so don't worry about me starting to play matchmaker with the commanders because that won't happen.

2- This happens around half a year after Shanks returns from East Blue missing an arm and his hat, that means almost ten years before the start of the series, so no Ace, and no Haruta either. There's no particular reason for this, but I think Haruta is barely a couple years older than Ace, and wouldn't be part of the crew at this point in time.

3- Though I don't want to write a Mary Sue, I'm not going to try to do an anti-Mary Sue either. The chances of a character with absolutely no Mary Sue characteristics are very slim, as even canon characters have them, but I'll try to keep them to a reasonable level. Please warn me if you see things getting out of hand.

4- Keep in mind we don't know much about the Whitebeard Pirates, as of most of the commanders we barely know the name and rank, and even the ones we know a little more about (like Whitebeard and Marco) are characters we've mostly seen in what most likely were the hardest moments of their lives. A good part of the characters' personalities in this story are a mix of what little we know about them, some generally accepted theories in the fandom, and my own speculations.

5- Though I'm no novice when it comes to writing, it's been a while since I wrote a het pairing (as you'll notice if you enter my profile), and I also have a somewhat different vision on romance. This means that if you're looking for a story full of romantic drama and trouble for the couple then this is not your story. There will be drama, of course, but most of it won't be of a romantic nature.

6- English is NOT my first language, and even doing my best efforts and having a beta there will most likely be some weird things or expressions here. Please, tell me if you see any.

7- I have nothing against criticism, in fact I would appreciate it, the only thing I have a problem with is rudeness. So, as long as you're polite, I'd be glad to read any kind of comment.

These notes are long, I know. I'll usually post any future notes at the end of each chapter, to explain any of the theories behind something I write.

Also, there are a lot of descriptions in this first chapter. That's not my usual system, but I needed them to differentiate people before the characters know any names to go by.

Story beta-readed by Dearshul :D

And, with nothing else to say here, I hope you enjoy my story :)

Chapter 1: An unfortunate chain of events

Psychology class was boring.

Well, technically all classes were boring, she didn't even have any art or language classes to look forward to as she had in high school, but having no interesting classes didn't mean she couldn't complain about how utterly bored she was.

There was only so much distraction doodling on a notebook's margins could provide.

Of course, she understood the usefulness of knowing about psychology for a lawyer, she'd been told about it enough times that she hadn't even doubted when she agreed to take the class, and though it was an interesting subject to know about, she could think of a thousand more interesting and far less tedious classes to take. Like something about history, now that would be great to study.

Still, if she was honest, this was one of her most interesting and thrilling courses. And that just about defined how sad her studies were.

She turned the page, thinking that a banana with sunglasses and a bikini would look great next to her notes on classical conditioning, when she felt a shiver run down her back. Before she could turn around in an instinctive yet useless gesture to find the source of the sensation, her head became foggy and everything went black.

Marco the Phoenix had been a pirate for many years, and he had spent the majority of that time in the New World. As a result, he was used to seeing the strangest of things. That's why he was one of the few who didn't freak out when a vortex opened and threw out a bunch of people and objects, including tables and chairs, on the beach.

It also helped that he had a good theory about the vortex's origin.

The day had been an average one up to that point: assigning chores, crewmates fighting or lazing around, some paperwork... Then they were attacked. That wasn't out of the ordinary either, as at least once every few months there was an overconfident and somewhat outstanding rookie pirate crew that challenged them.

In this case said crew wasn't an especially strong one, though the captain did have an interesting devil fruit power. According to said captain's boasting, he could alter reality, and that claim was confirmed by his constant changes of the battlefield to try to turn the battle in his favor.

From his position on the deck of the Moby Dick, Marco could see the immense potential of such an ability, and he could also tell the man hadn't explored properly its possibilities. He didn't stand a chance against Pops, and that was proven easily, as with a haki charged punch using his devil fruit power as well, Pops sent the other pirate captain tumbling into the ocean.

Under normal circumstances someone would have gone and fished the man out before he could drown, but this proved to be not normal circumstances: he had tried to protect himself using his power, and it was where both abilities collided that a ripple through the air started, resulting in the aforementioned vortex appearing out of nowhere. The sight of over fifty people falling from a couple of feet high, accompanied by tables, chairs, bags, writing utensils, and some strange square and rectangular devices was enough to disconcert even the Whitebeard Pirates, long used to the happenings of the New World, and they momentarily forgot about the fight and their opponents, from whom none remained conscious by now.

"What the fuck?" was the first comment after what seemed like an eternity of silence.

With that, everybody started moving again. First of all, Jozu and Vista, the commanders nearest to the newcomers, approached them, and instantly confirmed all the people who had appeared were unconscious. The nurses, who had also been watching from the deck, came down to land, or what passed for land in this small rock of an island, and started ordering the men around, telling them to move all the objects to another part of the beach and instructing them to turn the people around.

The fall had been short, and so aside from a girl with a head wound that was the first to be treated, there were only some sprained limbs.

It was around the time they had all of them placed as the nurses instructed that someone noticed a very important fact that had gone overlooked until that point.

"Hey, they're almost all chicks!"

And, with that, madness spread. The men who had been standing to the side, simply watching their crewmates work and making some comments, approached, surrounding the unconscious people Most of them were young women and some men, with the exception of an older woman of about fifty and a couple of women in their thirties, and started talking all at once.

"Think she'd be nice? I mean, she doesn't look shy."

"Wow, this one's got big boobs."

Marco sighed.

Now, don't get things wrong. The Whitebeard Pirates weren't more perverted than any other pirate crew, which wasn't saying much if you thought about it, and no one planned to abuse anybody nor would be allowed to even try if they wanted, but in a pirate crew where women were outnumbered fifty to one, the appearance of about forty women was bound to raise some attention from the heterosexual sector of the male crewmembers. Especially because most of said men had their sexual needs limited to when they landed in an island, as most of the women in the crew were in somewhat of a stable relationship with a crewmember, as could be expected when they had around two thousand men to choose from, or had sexual relationships with one or two different men. If Marco wasn't mistaken, the one who slept regularly with the most men was a nurse called Patty, who had those relationships with four different men right now.

That left a lot of sexually frustrated pirates on board. Marco included.

Seeing that the comments and wishful thinking would last for a while still, Marco finally jumped down from the deck and headed for Pops, who was currently sitting on a huge boulder to the side, watching his men.

"What should we do?" Marco asked once he got nearer, and leaned his back against the rock to watch his brothers, who now were being ushered away by annoyed nurses.

"Wait for them to wake up, I guess. Never had people appear on me like this before," Pops said, and Marco could tell he found all this very amusing.

They didn't have to wait long, as almost the moment Pops finished his sentence there came a yell from the middle of the patients.

"Oi, she's waking!" one of the men who had been employed to help announced.

Everybody turned to look in that direction and watched with baited breath and full of curiosity as a slim, relatively tall girl, of maybe 5'7'', dressed in blue shorts, a short sleeved pink t-shirt and blue sandals regained consciousness. She blinked confusedly for a moment, took in the scruffy man leaning eagerly over her, and screamed.

In hindsight, Marco thought, the fact that the whole crew had burst out laughing at the girl's reaction hadn't been the best course of action, but it had been priceless. Right when she screamed, the pirate who caused it flinched at the shrill sound and she sat up, accidentally head-butting him on the nose before backing away from him as fast as she could while still sitting on the floor, until she collided against another of her companions. And of those companions, most were startled awake by her scream, and the few who hadn't were soon woken up by someone else.

Right now, the calm beach where a battle had happened not even an hour ago was witness to a group of scared people huddled where they had been lying, looking around fearfully and confusedly at the hundreds of pirates surrounding them, be it standing, sitting on the sand, or from the ships anchored nearby.

Right now, the silence on the beach was so dense Marco could hear people fidgeting uncomfortably.

Of course, he should have known who would break it.

"Hey, what's with those faces? We're not gonna eat you or anything," Thatch said in a not completely successful attempt at his usually cheerful voice.

It didn't exactly work as Thatch most likely had intended, because the people seemed as scared as before, but it had some effect.

"W-Who are you?" the oldest woman in the group asked.

Being pirates, they weren't known for their organization, even if they were one of the most structured pirate crews out at sea, and thus at first several people answered at the same time, making it impossible for it to be understood what they said. Various attempts and glares later, it was finally only Izo who spoke, attracting the attention of their audience, who had been looking around dazedly.

"We're the Whitebeard Pirates."

That was a statement they hadn't needed to make in years, at least not when there were so many of their most famous faces, captain included, present, and if the lack of recognition of said faces could be considered strange, the reaction to those words was even more disconcerting. Blank stares greeted Izo's words, followed by the members of the group looking at one another. Marco could even see, amongst the confusion, some faint smiles that seemed to be disbelieving, as strange as that was.

"Pirates?" a red-haired girl dressed in black asked.

People nodded in the crowd and voiced affirmations.

"How did we get to the beach?" an average-looking blond boy asked, and just like that, what must have been some sort of shock after the experience vanished, and all hell broke.

Had Marco not been a pirate used to ruckus and loud crowds he would have wondered how such a relatively small group of people could be so noisy, most of them asking questions at the same time and, in no time, yelling at each other. Some even seemed to forget their fear and stood up.

Marco looked around, noticing his brothers were looking amusedly at the spectacle and, at some point and for no apparent reason, money started to change hands.

The argument, if it could be called that, continued, no intelligible words making it out of the circle. A group of pirates nearby were pointing to two girls, and Marco realized they were waiting for them to start fighting. Next to him, Pops seemed about to start laughing.

Deciding he had had enough, and not at all in the mood to play babysitter, Marco moved away from the rock and walked forward to stand closer to the group, where he calmly took in a deep breath.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP, ALL OF YOU!"

And, just like that, silence was made again. The pirates obeyed out of fear of inciting Marco's rage and earning themselves some unsavory chores, and the strangers seemed to remember what situation they were in and shut up as well, moving closer together again despite having been on the verge of killing each other mere moments ago.

Now Pops did burst out laughing, but Marco ignored him and glared around.

"Good." He stopped his eyes on the newcomers. "Now, can you tell me how you got here?"

Again, several of them started talking at the same time and, even though Marco couldn't make out most of the words, he did get the impression that they didn't know.

Raising his hand was enough to silence them. Good, he didn't want to yell again.

This time, he pointed to a random person, a short blond girl who stood at the front.

"What were you doing before waking up here?"

She hesitated for a moment, and Marco got the impression she wanted to hide when all eyes turned to her, but she answered.

"We were in class."

Marco looked at the mountain of desks and everything piled on them.

"Guess that explains that."

When the newcomers turned around, he could see they hadn't noticed the objects before, as most of them seemed to want to go there but didn't dare to, the fear of being in a strange place surrounded by hundreds of pirates apparently stronger than their desire to sort through their things.

"You'll go over them later. Now we're trying to discover how you got here," said Marco. That earned him their attention again. "Did something strange happen at class?"

Again, they looked at one another before the same blond girl spoke timidly.

"I-I think I fainted. I felt a shiver, then dizzy and then… nothing…"

"Me too," the girl next to her said.

And everybody else nodded or said they had felt the same thing.

Hearing that confirmed to Marco that it was most likely what happened during the fight that brought them here. He turned around to look at Pops.

"What should we do?"

Several gasps and exclamations made it apparent none of the strangers had actually noticed Pops before, and Marco had to smirk at their reactions. Out of the corner of his eye he saw them move closer together and look around more carefully.

Pops didn't take long to answer, he probably had already decided before the question.

"This seems to be our fault, right? We get them home."

Nodding, and deciding not to point out that technically it was only Pops' fault, Marco turned to the even more frightened people again.

"Where were you before appearing here?"

He saw what seemed to be relief, even hope in some cases, reflected on the eyes of many of them. The blond girl, who had by now become the group's spokesperson, answered.

"We were… at Louisiana State University."

Marco thought back to the maps stored in what most referred to jokingly as his office, many of them drawn by his own hand, and tried to find the location in them. He discarded any island in the New World almost immediately, and Paradise went right after. Maybe a city in one of the four Blues? That could explain some things.

Looking around, Marco noticed that no one in the crew seemed to recognize the place's name, some asking their brothers if they did, and he decided what to do next.

Centering again in the blond girl, he asked:

"Mind coming with me and pointing it on a map?"

Now she seemed even more scared than before and looked at her companions. They seemed divided between being as afraid as her or plainly confused, probably depending on how much they cared about her.

"You can come with some friends if it makes you feel better," Marco suggested, trying to seem as non-threatening and reassuring as possible.

She looked far more relieved now and in no time Marco found himself accompanying a group of six people, the older woman who now he assumed was the teacher included, to the navigation room.

It had been a long time since Edward Newgate had been caught completely by surprise in the treacherous and unpredictable Grand Line, but having a bunch of people falling out from a vortex qualified as unexpected.

He didn't actively participate in what followed, instead letting his children handle it. As expected, Marco took control before things grew out of hand, and in no time Newgate had all the information necessary to decide that they would help. Thanks to his haki, he could tell from the start that none of these people meant the slightest of threats, and it was for the same reason he knew their confusion and fear were genuine. They had been immensely shocked to see him, a bit too much if he was honest. He might have been one of the tallest humans alive, but the reactions had still been out of proportion.

He saw Marco come back from the Moby Dick with the small group, and noticed the shock in their faces was similar to when they first appeared. Even Marco seemed shocked, and that wasn't an easy feat to accomplish.

The women, for it were all women who went with Marco, no brave man to "protect" them, headed back to their companions, and Marco came straight to him.

Newgate didn't have time to ask anything before Marco spoke.

"They're from another world."

Newgate blinked.

"What do you mean?"

Marco showed him a strange, very crudely drawn map with several huge bodies of land.

"I showed them some maps and they didn't recognize any of them, then I asked one of them to draw a map and she did this. All of them agreed this is the approximate shape of the world."

"Well, damn, that complicates things."

"By 'another world' you mean another world?" Thatch, who was nearby, asked, and as the attention of most pirates was on them, many of them heard and the others learned it in no time.

Seeing that the group of strangers became altered again, Newgate guessed they had received the news as well.

"Now what?" Vista asked.

Newgate didn't need to think for long, seeing obvious the next course of action.

"We open that hole again. Now, where's that idiot excuse of a captain?"

Everybody looked around, as if expecting to see said man lying around amongst his still unconscious and heavily wounded, if not dead, crew.

"Didn't he fall into the sea like an hour ago?" Thatch asked.

Silence fell over the beach.

"Fuck."

To be continued

Some short final notes:

- I love Marco's 'yoi', I really do, but I couldn't get it to fit the dialogues, so I had to delete it. I'm still trying to see if Oda follows any sort of rule with it or simply puts it randomly (the second seems more likely.)

- About the class' origin: I chose a random place for them to come from, I have a friend checking I don't write anything excessively absurd, but this won't play a relevant role in the story.

Remember that reviews are lovely and greatly appreciated :)