Chapter 2

"Welcome to the Family."

Emma sighed and looked up at the half full moon as she walked down the street. Her? A pirate? It was a strange thought, but maybe it was something she needed to do. Law, her new captain, was walking a few paces behind her and they hadn't said a word to each other. After agreeing to join his crew, he fixed up her leg in a matter of seconds. His Devil Fruit ability was definitely the strangest thing she'd ever seen: her stomach churned remembering her dismembered leg floating in front of her as he removed the chunk of wood from her thigh. 'It could be fun, as long as he doesn't kill me first.'

After walking another block, they reached their destination. It was early, and she felt awful for waking them up at such an ungodly hour, but she had to say goodbye. This was her one request to law before she joined, and he allowed it but didn't seem to care much. He only came with her just in case she decided to run without answering his questions.

"Hello?"

The middle-aged woman opened the door and yawned before rubbing her eyes. She was wearing a black bathrobe and her brown hair was up in a messy bun. Her tired blue eyes widened a little when they met Emma's. "Emma-chan! Why are you here? Are you ok? You're dirty and hurt!" She went into frantic mother mode and grabbed the younger girl's arms, who just gave a lighthearted laugh. "Katie-san, I'm fine. A little banged up, but fine. I just came here to say…. good bye."

"Katie, who is it?" Maru asked gruffly, pushing her to side of the doorway. His hands were clenched into fists as he stared angrily at the visitors. "Father, it's just Emma. She said…. she said she's here to say good bye?" They turned to look at her, confusion on their faces. "Good bye? What about the bar? Where are you going?" The older man looked past her at the pirate captain. "It's you. How'd you manage to talk her into this?"

"Now, now!" Emma placed a hand behind her head and laughed nervously. "He helped me, which is why I'm going with him. But, Maru-san, the bar was destroyed. I'm guessing by those pirates from earlier today." She shook her head and sighed. "Anyways, everything is gone, except Ty-san's picture. It somehow managed to survive the blast. As much as I know he'd be pissed about the bar, we all know this is what's best for me."

Katie held her hands over her mouth and shook her head, tears flying from her eyes. "I'm so glad you're ok, Emma-chan. He always knew you wouldn't stay here forever, but we'll miss you so much." She hugged Emma tightly and Maru patted her on the arm. "You've got a mouth on ya, but I know you'll do well out there. We didn't train you all these years for nothing."

Emma nodded, smiling as she removed herself from Katie's embrace. "Oh, that reminds me." She reached into her pocket, pulling what little money she managed to save out. "It's not a whole lot, but I want you guys to have this. If you find any more in the rubble, it's yours." She placed it into Maru's open palm. "Oh, and please let Sy-san know what happened. I'm sure he won't be happy with the outcome, but I'll hopefully be able to see him soon!" She laughed nervously and Katie shook her head. "He's definitely going to be sending us an angry letter about it."

After giving the two one last hug, she turned and headed back towards Law. "Ready, doctor-san?" She shoved one hand in her pocket, the other clutching the picture frame, and smiled at him. He didn't answer, just turned and started walking back towards the docks. 'This will be a fun trip.' She sighed to herself, also thinking of the three other weirdos with him earlier in the day.

"Wes, wait! Come back inside!"

Emma barely got a chance to turn around before Wes threw himself into her back. "A-Are you really leaving, Emma-san?" He was sobbing making her laugh a little. "Yeah, it's about time. Don't you think?" She ruffled his hair a little bit. "You take care of your mom, ok?" He looked up at her, tears and snot streaming down his young face. "Who's gonna train me if you're gone?" She shook her head and sighed lightly. "You don't need training, I don't want you getting into more trouble. Your mom and grandpa would kill me!" She laughed as he released himself from around her waist. "Listen, I'll come back and visit sometime. Take good care of yourself and your family, alright? You better do well in school and get you a good job." He wiped his face and sniffled loudly before pointing at Law. "And you!" The man had his head tilted forward causing his hat to cast a dark shadow over his eyes. "You better take care of Emma-san, or I'll come get you!" Laughing a little, she flicked his forehead. "Stop threatening people, baka."

Waving good bye to the people she had come to love for the past ten years caused a small ache in her heart. She wanted to cry, really, she did. It physically hurt her that she wasn't able to shed tears for them, but she knew it wasn't her fault. She shook her head lightly; she needed to stop thinking about the past. She never dreamed she'd be a pirate, but here she was. Following a notoriously evil pirate back to his ship to join his crew. How could she ever get so lucky?

It wasn't long before they reached the dock and Bepo was there waiting. "Captain! Where did you go, we were looking for you everywhere!" He exclaimed, waving his arms around dramatically. "Wait." He stopped, blinking multiple times as he noticed the woman by his side. "Hello, bear-san." She waved awkwardly as Law climbed onto the deck. "Bepo, Emma will be joining us from now on." He walked past his navigator towards the door. "Joining us? Like part of our crew?"

"Yeah, I guess I am a crew member now." She laughed lightly and climbed on board, noting that their ship was a vibrantly bright yellow submarine. "How did you guys get a hold of a submarine? I've only seen one once…." She trailed off as neither of them were listening to her. Bepo was right on top of Law asking question after question about her. "Well, never mind then." She followed them inside, shutting the heavy metal door behind her.

"We should leave pretty soon. Get someone to show Emma around so you can navigate. I'm going to my room."

Law immediately turned to the left towards the stairs, leaving two very confused crew members standing in the hallway. Bepo sighed and turned to the woman, looking at her injuries. "Did those guys come back?" He asked sadly and she nodded. "Yeah, they blew up the bar. Decided it would be best for me to head out." She shrugged and looked at their surroundings. The hallway was cold and dark and split into three paths. On their left were stairs down and to their right were stairs heading up. Straight forward was a long, eerie hallway that lead to who knows where.

"Well," Bepo started, drawing her back to reality. "I think some of the others are awake who can help out. But for now, here" He pointed to their right, "are stairs to controls for the sub and mapmaking room. That's what I do, as the navigator." He said proudly, pointing at himself. It took him only a moment to become embarrassed and blush. "A-And this way is the surgical ward. We have a bunch of advanced machines and stuff for surgery. Captain's put in a lot of work to become a great doctor." He pointed down the creepy hallway in front of them. "Gross. Hospitals creep me out." A shiver ran up Emma's spine and Bepo laughed a little.

"Follow me, I'm sure someone's eating in the kitchen and can show you the rest of the way."

They headed down the stairs to the left, leading them into a dining room with a large picnic-like table that could seat over 20 people. Passed that was the actual kitchen with two fridges, a large stove and oven, and three sinks. This all hugged the edge of the left side along with multiple cabinets. There was a large island in the middle that was covered in food to prep for the next meal. To the right, a door was open leading into what she could only assume was the pantry. "Shachi's probably in there." She followed the polar bear through the open door and let out an audible gasp. It was massive! Shelves upon shelves upon shelves of food covered the walls. She couldn't even reach the top! There was a mountain of barrels, presumably alcohol, stacked against the wall on the far side.

"Oi, Bepo. You better not be eating all my food." A familiar voice chastised the bear, who apologized for no reason. "So, you were going to eat it!" Shachi had turned around to yell at his fellow crew member when he finally noticed Emma. "It's you? Why are you here?" He crossed his arms and pouted childishly. "Captain asked her to join the crew." Bepo pushed her in front of him. "You have to show her around now so I can get us going!" He quickly took off back upstairs, leaving a surprised Shachi alone with her.

"Why would captain want you here?"

She shrugged as he shooed her out of the pantry, closing the door behind them. He placed his hands in the pockets of his boiler suit and gestured his head to follow him down the hallway. "Those assholes from earlier came back and blew up my bar. I didn't really have anywhere else to go." She explained and he laughed. "So, you asked to join the crew?" He stopped them right next to another set of stairs that headed to a lower level. "Nope." She shook her head. "He happened to be walking by and helped my injuries. I said yes when he asked, why not I guess?"

"Tch." He pulled one hand out to fix his hat. "Well, as long as you're not useless. Can you do anything around here? I guess you can kind of fight, you didn't do that much though." She frowned as he tried to make her sound bad. "I can cook and bake. Gus and Katie taught me how to do all that when I first moved here. Maru-san and Ty-san have been teaching me how to fight for the past ten years. I guess I can clean, but most people can." She put a finger on her bottom lip, thinking. "Well, I guess you can help me in the kitchen then. There's now 23 people on the ship and we eat a lot." He gestured towards the stairs. "This leads to the bottom level where the baths and Captain's room are. No one ever really goes to his room unless somethings wrong."

She followed Shachi down another long, eerie hallway. Thankfully, this one had windows on the side that let in some light. "Here's where the rest of us sleep." There were two doors at the end of the hallway, the one on the left was open and echoing with the sound of laughter. She peered in and saw a few bunk beds and a few men who hadn't noticed them yet standing around talking. "That's the men's side." He walked up to the closed door on the right ride and knocked loudly. "Here's the women's side. It's a bit quitter."

"Gimme a sec."

There was some fumbling around behind the door and Shachi stepped back. By now, a few men on the other side were leaning their heads out of the door. "~Oooh, Shachi who's this?" A man with short brown bangs and a strange, wavy black hat asked. "You got a girlfriend and didn't tell us?!" Another man poked his head out: his puffy black hair obscured his eyes and a long grey bandana covered the rest of his face. "Why can't you ever bring any cute guys over?" A third man with white hair down to his shoulder and a green baseball cap with small moose antlers joined in. "Shachi got a girlfriend?" The last one to come out was the other man at the bar earlier: Penguin. "It's you!"

Before anyone could answer, the door to the woman's room opened revealing a woman in blue pajamas, yawning dramatically. She was wiping the sleep from her brown eyes and had her puffy brown hair pulled back by a headband. "What do you need, I'm exhausted." She complained, frowning as she looked over the two of them. "Well since you guys are here." Shachi moved his hand from the top of Emma's head to her waist. "This is our new crew member: Emma."

"What? Why did he ask her?"

"Ah, she's so pretty!"

"It'll be nice to have another girl to look at!"

"She looks badass!"

"Let me introduce you to the other idiots." Shachi sighed and pointed at them one by one.

Wavy black hat man: "Clione."

Bandana mask man: "Uni."

White haired man: "Moose."

'That one's pretty obvious.' She thought to herself as Shachi continued. "You met Penguin earlier." He pointed to his friend who waved lightly, a light blush on his cheeks. "I'm Shachi, and your new roommate is- "

"Ikkaku." The woman cut him short and opened the door for Emma to enter. "It's late, you better get in here before those idiots start annoying you." She beckoned her inside quickly. "Ah, you're right it's late. It was nice meeting you, I'll see you all in the morning." Emma practically jumped inside the room before the men could say anything and Ikkaku slammed it shut, locking it.

"They're all pretty much controlled by their dicks, not their brains." She sighed and shook her head. "Not that they'd try anything, but sometimes they do some serious prank wars and I don't want to be involved in that." Emma nodded and looked around her new room. It was just as big as the men's side and filled with just as many beds. She could tell Ikkaku slept on the bottom of the one closest to the door. There were dressers in between each set of beds too. "You can pick whichever you'd like. Obviously there's plenty of room in here." She went and sat on her own bed and crossed her arms, watching Emma closely.

"I'll take this one." Emma sat down on the bottom bunk in the middle, about two beds away from Ikkaku. She placed the dirty picture frame of Ty on the dresser next to her. "It's pretty rare Captain just asks someone to join the crew." Ikkaku said, almost as if she was disapproving the decision. Emma shrugged as she took off her boots and threw them to the ground. "I'm a little surprised as well. But, I have nowhere else to go now so I said yes. Does he usually ask for the crew's permission?"

"No, he doesn't care what we think. You look like you got into a fight. I assume he thinks you're strong."

Emma sighed and placed her dirty hair up in a ponytail. "I got into a little scrap, but I didn't get cut up from it. Some dickwad pirates blew up my bar." She explained and the other woman nodded understandingly. "Yeah, they're kind of assholes like that." She was smiling now but turned her attention to her leg. "What happened there? Pretty interesting leg."

"Everyone keeps asking." Emma laughed lightly, stretching out the leg in focus. She removed her revolver from the holster and placed it on the dresser. "I lost it when I was a kid a while back. It's not that big of a deal." Ikkaku opened her mouth to say something but was cut off by the loudspeaker.

"Going down in 5 minutes. We should reach Wraxel Island by midday."

Bepo's voice cut off and Emma raised an eyebrow. 'What an interesting set up.' She thought as Ikkaku stood up and went to the lights. "We'll, I'm sure you'll get a bunch of questions at breakfast so I can wait till then. Let's get some rest for now."

Emma groaned as she opened her eyes. She had barely slept with all that had happened and on top of it her leg was aching. 'It wasn't just a bad dream.' She thought to herself, frowning. Her back made a loud cracking sound as she sat up and placed her feet on the cold floor. If everyone was still asleep, she could take some time to herself before getting bombarded by the rest of the crew.

Ikkaku was snoring lightly and didn't budge as Emma awkwardly made her way to the door. It was extremely dark, and the shades were pulled down over the small windows. She shuffled her feet slowly, hoping to not stub a toe on the edge of the bedframe. At last she found the metal door, which was surprisingly hard to open. "Shit." She grumbled as it creaked open, letting a small beam of light in the room. She turned to see if the other woman had been bothered by it, but she had on a bright yellow eye mask.

Emma laughed a little as she stepped out, bringing the heavy door with her. As her luck would have, Shachi was doing the same next to her. His red hair was a ruffled mess and he had a bit of drool hanging from his mouth still. "Hey." She said quietly, giving him an awkward wave. He gave her a weird look as he placed his cap over his unbrushed hair. "Why are you up so early?" He motioned for her to follow him down the hallway.

"I didn't sleep much."

"Hm, not surprising I guess. The sub is hard to get used to. You can help me with breakfast at least."

He turned the lights on as they continued the journey into the kitchen. The windows were uncovered here, but since they were underwater no light came through. She stepped over to one of them and watched as a large school of fish were pulled by quickly in the current. "What do you usually make for everyone?" She asked as he headed into the large pantry. "Eggs are usually the easiest thing for breakfast. I make a crap ton of bacon and occasionally I'll make something special like pancakes. We always have coffee, mostly for the captain, and tea ready." He came back out holding a few bags of apples. "Here, I'll show you what you can start on."

It didn't take long for the aroma of bacon, eggs, and coffee to spread through the ship. Law was the first to come up, but it looked as though he hadn't slept well either. "Morning, captain." Shachi said, handing him a cup of coffee almost as an instinct. Law grabbed it from his subordinates' hand and turned to Emma, who was cooking up some more eggs. "Emma, I see you've already found something to help with." She smiled and looked at him: he wasn't wearing his hat, revealing his short, messy black hair. "Doctor-san, good morning. Someone has to make some good food around here." She teased, making Shachi glare at her.

Law said nothing as the two began bickering loudly. He almost regretted his choice of taking the woman on board, but he found her too interesting to ignore. As he sat down in the middle of the table, the rest of the crew came barging in, moaning and groaning about lack of sleep. They barely noticed the newest crew member carrying a large plate of bacon and eggs over to the table.

"W-Whoa, wait who's that?!"

"A girl?!"

"Captain you never told us you were getting a maid!"

Shachi smacked a few them on the hands with his spatula. "Oi, go sit down. Let her finish cooking and then you can ask questions!" He shouted, forcing the men to sulk over to the table with their captain. "This is quite new, even for you captain." Moose commented, sitting down on Law's right side. "I have to agree." Penguin said, sitting on his right side. "I mean, I saw her at the bar too, but she didn't seem that special." Law sighed and closed his eyes as he leaned against the table, placing his head in his hand. "If she proves to be a burden, we'll leave her at the next island."

Emma and Shachi handed everyone plates and silverware after they placed the heaping plates of food throughout the table. "Dig in, losers." Shachi grumbled before taking the empty seat across from Law. "Emma-chan, come sit here." Moose scooted over, patting the space in between the two. "Oh, alright then."

Everyone started the morning ritual of arguing over who gets what and how much. Emma was certain a brawl would erupt between Moose and Uni over the last piece of sausage. She looked over to her left at Law who, surprisingly for his frame, had a large plateful of food. "Oi, Emma-chan." Clione spoke between mouthfuls of egg. She piled a small portion of eggs and bacon on her own plate, probably the smallest amount out of everyone at the table. "Where are you from?" She deadpanned at him. "Already starting with the questions." She muttered before sighing. "I'm from a small island to the east called Isaldor."

"But you were on this last island? I don't think it was called Isa…. whatever."

"Isaldor. No, we were at Bell Island. I've been living there for about, oh, ten years now?"

"What made you move?"

"Lots of things happened. I stayed on Sabaody for a few years before I lived there."

"Oh, nice. Sabaody?! What did you do there?"

Emma looked down at her plate, frowning. "You guys ask a lot of questions." She mumbled and Moose laughed, slapping her lightly on the shoulder. "Ah, you get used to it. But to change the pace of things, what happened to your leg?" Ikkaku, who was sitting on his right side, smacked him on the back of the head. "You can't just ask people that!" She shouted, a vein forming on her forehead. "Ouch! It was just a nosey question, I'm sure we're all wondering!"

"Oh, it's not a huge deal." Emma laughed a little as she took a bite of food. She brought her left leg up into the seat, showing off the top portion of her shiny fake leg. "It got cut off when I was kid; about 10 years old or so. I made some people made I shouldn't have." Everyone nodded in unison, happy with her ominous question. "How'd you get the metal prosthesis?" Law finally chimed in, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. She shrugged and paced her leg back down, continuing on with her meal. "There's a doctor on Sabaody who works with the World Government or the Marines or something. He did my surgery and got me my leg."

Law furrowed his eyebrows as he set his fork down on the now empty plate. This strange woman kept surprising him one detail after another. He'd never heard of the original island she was from but to live on Sabaody for a few years was strange to him. Of course, World Government and Marine doctors had access to an endless amount of resources, especially with Vegapunk there. He looked at her laughing and talking with the rest of the crew as if she hadn't just met them. She was definitely hiding something, but he wasn't certain if those secrets were worth investigating.

"Since you and Shachi are the cooks, someone else usually does the dishes after." Moose said, grabbing the plates Emma held in her hands. Breakfast was over and most of the crew had scattered to start getting the sub ready for landing at the next island. He handed them to Uni who was delegated for cleaning duty along with Penguin. "There's 21 other people here, you don't have to do everything. We know you'll pull your weight around here."

"Emma."

Law interrupted their banter, walking up next to them with Ikkaku by his side. She hadn't really noticed before, but he made her feel like a dwarf: towering over her by almost a foot. Moose and Ikkaku were tall as well and she craned her neck to look up at all of them. "You'll be getting a suit at the next island, so for now borrow Ikkaku's clothes." He pointed to the other woman who nodded in agreement. "How are your injuries?"

"Well," Emma rubbed her bandaged leg lightly. "my leg was kind of achy this morning, but that's about it." She confessed as he began to walk away. "If it doesn't go away by tomorrow, I'll give you some pain medicine." He said shortly before disappearing into the hallway, presumably heading upstairs.

"He's very straight to the point," She laughed awkwardly as the three walked in the opposite direction. "That's just how he is, but he's a good guy. He takes care of us." Moose said, shrugging casually and Ikkaku nodded in agreement. "He keeps to himself mostly. We're used to it by now. Anyways, I'll grab you some clothes and take you to the showers."

"Ah, please and thank you. A shower sounds amazing right now!"