Here's to Chapter Five of this story. Happy reading!

{Disclaimer: All rights of One Piece belong to Oda and unfortunately not to me. I do own Rosalie, however.}

[Edited: September 4th, 2016 due to a still poorly-written chapter that I've basically given up on trying to make any better than what it is. This is probably the best that it's going to be.]

Chapter 5: Stupidity

The winds grew more and more relentless the further she walked away from Ace. The landscape no longer carried a picturesque look; rather, it had devolved into a dark, stormy atmosphere. And yet, her stubbornness prevented Rosalie from simply turning back around and hearing him out in entirety.

Of course, this reaction was totally unnecessary, borderline immature and reckless. She barely knew Ace, thus she did not truly have the ground to stand on when she angrily walked away. His life was his, and her life was hers. He had become a mode of transportation and opportunity to her, but truly nothing else.

This behavior was not foreign to her. In fact, Rosalie was no stranger to overreacting to someone yelling and ignorantly finding herself ridiculously lost in the woods, sometimes even for multiple days.

Thinking back to a time when she was younger and possibly even more defiant, Rosalie continued to tredge through the snow. At that point, she had walked around the trees and had trouble distinguishing one from the next. Everything was so big and new to her. For a child who had never studied trees, every one was going to look similar save for the build of the tree, the height, the bark and the color of the leaves. Frustrated, she paced back and forth looking through the trees in hopes of finding a way out, or at least getting some form of shelter.

When the darkness had gotten to be black as pitch and the stars were bright enough to count, she had given up for the night and sat under a pine tree. The owls began to call out and screech for mice hiding under leaves and in the branches. Howls from the wild dogs and wolves began to echo through the trees. It became so noisy, and increasingly difficult to sleep. At some point, she'd drifted off only to be awoken early in the morning to a twig snapping. Something had definitely walked by - not that she really intended to find out what.

Her second day alone in the woods was significantly worse than the first, especially in a childhood mindset. Rosalie had attempted to create her own makeshift compass and direct herself into the proper location. However, the entire concept of 'North', 'South', 'East' and 'West' was almost completely useless, seeing as she hadn't known the direction she'd fled her father's home in the first place. This trend of being directionally challenged never really disappeared after all of those years either.

After struggling for so long to find a place of shelter, stumbling upon a cave was a saving grace to her. Of course, Rosalie wasn't the only cold being barely managing in the woods and should have realized that animals are far more adaptive to their surroundings than humans; a smart creature would probably rest in this cave. In fact, after only a couple of minutes, a stray wolf lazily strolled into the cave and gave her a look. Too tired and cold to even act frightened by the animal, Rosalie just silently hoped that nothing would happen. The wolf sniffed around and, having ascertained there were no immediate threats, got comfortable on the floor, ready to rest for the remainder of the night.

The wolf may not have been the friendliest animal to share shelter with Rosalie, but it certainly allowed her at least the smallest peace of mind to know that another animal would not come into the cave.

It was Red that eventually rescued her from her strenuous adventure and an invaluable life lesson. However, she'd failed to accurately practice what she preached. Despite the fact she had told herself not to, Rosalie had reverted back into her young, naïve and immature ways. Her body had already decided to abscond far before her brain could completely study the rest of the situation.

Rubbing her arms in the hopes that some form of friction would at least slightly maneuver the blood in her body, Rosalie sighed, leaving a great cloud of breath in its wake. The temperature seemed to continue to drop the longer she walked. Finding a stray tree trunk, she sat down and alternated which arm she'd rub for warmth.

A small portion of her hoped that her cowboy-hat wearing companion would come sulking through the snow and call her out for her childishness. Or perhaps, simply come through the snow and tell her that she was close to a desired location - an inn of sorts. Anything would have satisfied the gnawing guilt and fear slowly building up in her body.

She couldn't feel her nose, but she knew it was as cherry-red as can be while the rest of her face was probably pale. Her teeth were a chattering nightmare and her fingers had slowly ceased in moving individually. Despite her wishes, Ace had not come, or from an optimistic perspective, had yet to find her.

The wind made a racket every time it blew and her chattering teeth made for an overly loud white noise as she slowly succumbed to her freezing end. On top of that, she could barely see a couple of feet in front of her, and the air was closing up her lungs, making her wheeze. As her breathing became more labored, Rosalie felt that the situation just wasn't going to get any better.

Standing up, Rosalie realized the left side of her body was noticeably far more numb than it was before, to the extent in which she could barely lift her leg over the steadily increasing mounds of snow. In short, she wasn't going to make it very far the longer she waited for the chance Ace might return. Slowly shuffling forward after a great gust a wind pushed from behind her, Rosalie began to walk in what she hoped and assumed was the direction from whence she had come. However, in her semi-precarious state, she failed to notice the rock jutting up from the ground and tripped over it. Yelping out in pain, Rosalie shuddered at the several droplets of blood begin to decorate the virgin white snow. She continued to investigate further in disgust to find a gash about five inches long bleeding rather profusely.

Looking around, she realized that if anything else could go wrong, it probably will during this point in time. Her entire existence had completely given up on even slightly attempting to give her a moment's peace, and karma was out to get her.

'First when I was a little kid,' she thought bitterly, 'and now today. It's almost as if prophesied that I must die in the woods, or at least experience some form of punishment.'

Too absorbed in the wallows of her self-despair, Rosalie failed to sense a minor disturbance in the wind currents behind her. Near-silent footfalls began to edge ever closer to her position, until one foot eventually landed on a fallen branch nearby. However, none of these noises even reached her ears.

Her quiet assailant continued to stealthily approach her, eventually coming up right behind her, deftly smacking her in the back of the head with what seemed to be an extremely large and thick branch, rendering her completely unconscious.

And in that moment, Rosalie's white-washed world faded to black, her pain dulled by the cold. She attempted to see what had happened, but only saw a small outline of what she'd been hit with. Sighing, her consciousness gave way to the dark.

A/N: I could probably have written this chapter at least five more times and still not liked it simply because it's almost entirely unnecessary and should've been combined with the next chapter, thus why it's so short. Maybe that's why I changed the title to "Stupidity".