Hello everyone! I'm back! That's all I have to say. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own anything except ideas and OCs


Chapter 8: Friend or Foe

Jenn woke up to a white room with white walls and the smiling face of Ace. How familiar.

"Ugh. What happened?" Jenn sat up, looking around the sick bay.

"Isn't it obvious? You got your butt kicked by a marine." Ace said, grinning like an idiot.

"I recall winning though."

"Just barely, Nerd. To think that you actually pulled that off."

"Hey! That wasn't very nice. At least I'm not a flame brain." Jenn said, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Did you just call me a flame brain?" Ace feint a hurt look.

"It's got a nice ring to it." Jenn mused.

"Nerd."

"Flame Brain."

"Too rational."

"Not rational enough."

"Smartass."

"Dumbass."

"Hey!"

"Alright, alright...sorry that was mean." Jenn raised her hands in defeat before smirking evilly. She quickly snatched her pillow and smooshed it right in Ace's face, causing him to fall off the corner of the bed where he was sitting cross-legged from her.

"Oh no you didn't!" Ace hopped back on the bed now also evilly smirking.

"Eep! Nooo, Ace!" Jenn starts giggling furiously. "Tickling is cheating."

"I'm a pirate! I don't play by the rules." The commander laughed along, continuing his relentless attack which caused Jenn to flail around crazily and send both of them tumbling to the floor.

Finally, with both of them out of breath from laughing they just lay side by side on the floor for a moment in comfortable silence.

"You know," Ace says after a bit. "I'm glad you're okay. You almost had me worried for a second there."

"If you don't want to worry about me then next time you should come to my rescue." Jenn turns to look at him.

"sorry but I was too busy trying to follow someone's horribly constructed plan." Ace meets her gaze and smiles knowing it would irritate her.

Jenn just grabs the pillow laying on the floor and mushes his face with it again, grinning with satisfaction.

"Ne, I'll teach you how to fight." Ace said after peeling the pillow off his face.

"Good to know that we're both thinking the same thing."

"Alright, let's start right away." He jumps to his feet and offers his hand to Jenn, helping her to her feet.

With her stomach growling loudly she suggests, "How about we get something to eat first?"

"Good to know that we're both thinking the same thing."


Jenn was trying to pay close attention to Marco for once. After confirming that, yes, She did create a horrible battle plan, Jenn and Ace were sitting through a strategic lesson given by Marco.

It was super simple for Jenn. She remembered every concept the was shown. She already knew them anyways, just not what they were called. On the other hand, Ace was having a nice nap the was caused by one of his narcoleptic fits. It was alright since Ace fought with instinct better than all the fancy technical terms.

"I don't get, yoi. You're so good at this theoretically but you suck at actually applying it."

"Ummm...there may be two reasons for that. One, everything moves a lot fast on the battle field than on a piece of paper. Two, it's harder to be a player in the 'game' than manipulating the players as a mastermind from outside of the 'game'." Jenn held up two fingers as she listed the reasoning.

"So if you were'nt a part of the battle then things would be alright?"

"I don't know. Maybe. It was just a theoretical guess." Jenn though about it carefully. If she was able to see the whole 'playing field' then it would really just be like playing a game. Theoretically. It was a hard call to say whether or not it was true, after all Jenn wasn't used to applying her theories to actual situations. School tends to do that to you.

Marco seemed to consider this for a while. There was no denying that she had a certain talent for strategies. It might have been attentiveness and situational awareness. Taking something from your surroundings and changing it into your favor was a hard skill to gain. But it seemed that Jenn already had that skill, and it was exceptionally polished too.

"Be our tactician." Ace mumbled, as he woke up from his nap.

Jenn looked at Ace, undecisively. "A-are you sure?!"

"Yeah, why not? We already talked it over with Oyaji."

"It seems like an important role. Is it really okay?"

"Tacticians are hard to find, yoi." Marco cut Ace's reply off. Ace smartly shuts his mouth, knowing that the first division commander had a better way with words than he did. "Good ones are hard enough to find, but you're exceptional. People like you are almost non-existant."

Jenn scratched the back of her head sheepishly. "I wouldn't say that I'm that great. But if you guys really insist I guess I could give it a shot." Wow talk about peer pressure, Jenn added in her head.

With the decision made Ace wanted to start to train with Jenn.

"So...What's your favorite weapon?" Ace looked at her expecting a realistic answer.

Instead, "Frying pan." Jenn grins at him. "Definitely the frying pan. Oh yeah, I gotta tell Thatch sorry for denting it."

Ace facepalmed. "Is this because of the fight with the marine?"

"It's the only fight I've ever gotten into!" Jenn gave him a thumbs up. To say Ace was surprised is a little bit understated.

"You've never fought before?! Why did you even accept being a pirate?! You know we're the strongest crew in the world, right?" He didn't seem mad, just overly surprised.

"Yup! I thought it seemed fun so I joined! Plus you guys were the ones to ask." Her energy was never ending. Sometimes she was so dim-witted that Ace wondered how she was any good at tactics. Though he had no excuse, he knew he was just the same (not that he would ever confess that.)

"Well then. Where should we start?"

"Ne, what happened to the marine?" Jenn completely ignores Ace's question, deep in thought about something else. "He hit his head on the counter so he shouldn't be dead unless he messed up his connection with his brain and spinal cord. Maybe he could have been disabled but instead he turned into a supernatural being with psychic powers..."

"You knocked him out and then we threw him overboard." Ace tried to stop Jenn's useless thinking. It was most likely that the marine was dead anyways.

"Oh." Jenn's wild imagination instantly stopped. "Let's get started then."

Ace believed in learning through experience. So in other words, he just began with attacking Jenn. No instruction provided. Though it was pretty obvious that if Jenn didn't do something then she was toast, so the simplest solution was to run away from the flaming maniac. The next half hour proceeded with Jenn running around the Moby Dick dodging from Ace's flaming fists.

It can be classified under 'Endurance training' Jenn decided as she ducked out of the way of Ace's range. "And to think that I can't even fight him because he's a logia type, that's definitely cheating." Jenn mumbled to herself.

Looking ahead, Jenn took a sharp turn around a corner in hopes to throw Ace off track. Instead of making a clean, sharp turn like she had intended she rammed into a wall. Or that's what it seemed like at first. Stumbling from the sudden force, Jenn trips over her own two feet and falls onto the floor.

Looking up she was met with a much more horrifying sight than a wall.

"Zehahaha... Sorry about that." Mismatched teeth and curly black hair looked down on her. His big oaf-like hand extended down, offering to help her up. Jenn was faintly aware of Ace stopping behind her.

"Oh, hey there Teach! Looks like ya caught Nerd for me."

Jenn takes his offered hand hesitantly, not sure what to do. Her heart was beating rapidly, it's thudding almost drowning out the conversation and Jenn was sure it wasn't because of the game of cat and mouse that she just had with Ace.

Calming herself down, Jenn shakes Teach's hand. "Nice to meet you, I don't believe we've met before. I'm Jenn."

"Ahh, you must be the new recruit that everybody's talking about." He grinned at her widely. "I'm Marshall D. Teach. Nice to meet you, Jenn."

Jenn resists the urge to grimace as he said her name. He shook her hand with a smile. "Looks like you're doing some training with the commander here, huh?"

"Yeah. It's more like a game of tag though." Jenn said, trying to be friendly despite knowing what he does in the future. No way was that going to happen, she was definitely going to change a couple of things around here.

"Well, it would work a bit better if you would attack me back at some point." Ace butted in.

Jenn and Ace suddenly engaged in a staredown. "Guess what?" Jenn inched a bit closer to Ace. "I can't punch fire."

"Oh, I should have thought of that. Doesn't matter though, we're still going to continue." Quickly, he throws another punch at Jenn in hopes to catch her off guard.

Swiftly ducking underneath the punch, Jenn takes off running again. Despite being tired of running around for so long, Jenn was actually relieve to just get away from Teach before she said something that she would regret. "Later, Teach!" Still she should be friendly until she found a way to deal with it.

"Yeah, see you in a bit, Teach." Ace darted off running after Jenn.

"Stop chasing me! I do enough running anyways!"

"We're training."

"No we aren't! You're just like your crazy ass gramps, chasing me around the ship!"

Teach watched in amusement at the two bicker and seemed to be satisfied with the new recruit. He had a friendly smile on, clean of any evil intent. The only thought that was going through his head was how much louder the ship had gotten with Jenn around. Not that it wasn't loud before.


"I can't believe that you actually chased me around for so long." Jenn was laying on her back looking up at the sky, exhausted from 'training'.

Ace laid beside her, deciding to go cloud watching. "At least you're fast. You should have seen when I did that with some of the guys from the third division."

Jenn silently thanked her brother for forcing her into sports. Track and field has served her well.

"Oh look, that one looks like a bunny." Ace pointed at a big puffy looking cloud. They had been laying in the middle of the deck for about an hour now. Just talking and looking at clouds, letting the sunlight pour over them.

Most days were calm, though being a pirate, the calm never lasted long. Vista could be seen approaching them. "Ace, Oyaji's calling a commander's meeting."

"Alright, I'm coming." Ace got up and headed to the galley, where it was most likely that the rest of the commanders were waiting. Vista stayed behind to talk to Jenn.

"Did you take up the position?"

"Tactician? Yeah, I agreed." Jenn got up and dusted herself off.

"Then I think you should probably attend this meeting too."

"Okay." Jenn was a bit crestfallen at having to be there, not exactly liking meetings. She always found them to be too boring. Though she was kind of excited to see what this meeting was all about.

The meeting wasn't exactly what Jenn was expecting. When she thought meeting, she thought boring talks and flip boards that made no sense. Instead, Oyaji was very straightforward with the situation.

One of the islands under the Whitebeard reign had been taken over by a group of bandits of sorts. Not much info was known about them but it was confirmed that they had conquered more than just one or two islands. but all the surrounding islands. Nearly ten of them. Their main base was held in Nova town, the island that Oyaji owned.

"They're a dangerous group. According to the mayor, some of the villagers have joined up arms with them." Oyaji finished. They were a large group, said to be almost as big as our crew, with the joined arms of the villagers. It would be hard to identify who was who. Not to mention that it would be dangerous to walk around the towns without knowing who was the enemy.

"Alright, ideas?" Marco took over, waiting for any ideas on how to come at this situation. It probably happened a lot since everybody seemed to know what they were doing.

As each commander offered up ways to take out the group of bandits, Jenn just sat quietly listening. It seemed like a dangerous situation with that many people that they were up against. Jenn carefully inspected the map. Something was wrong.

"They're trying to lure us in." Jenn realized the more she thought about formation of the islands that were under the bandit's control formed a misshaped ring. The biggest island was in the middle. The one that was under the Whitebeard reign.

It made things difficult when there was no easy path into the ring and out of the ring. Marco had suggested attacking one island at a time and completely annihilate each island. That way there would be no splitting up and better chances of success.

Roughly sketching the map onto a different piece of paper, Jenn considers the idea. It was logical to try and keep everyone together, it would be a good plan. But with how close the islands are together, it risks the chance of being jumped by reinforcement.

"Here's what I think." Jenn said pointing at the rough sketch. "We split into 2 separate groups. One attacking from the northwest, the other from the southeast." Jenn drew in two little ships in the respective corners of the page.

"The goal is really simple, instead of running in and starting a war we can just observe." Jenn drew arrows extending from this northwest ship onto two islands that were side by side. "The goal here is reconnaissance. Send in a small group and keep and eye out for enemy troops or emplacements."

Dragging her pencil across the page for the other ship, she arrowed five other islands on the southeast side. "Same goes for this side. Take note of strengths, weaknesses, special abilities or any particular behaviors."

"I see. That way we can split their forces when we attack." At least Marco knows what Jenn's doing.

Jenn was just about to continue when a high pitched ringing stopped her in her tracks. The unfamiliar ring was distinctly different than the usual 'purupuru' of the den den mushi. Everybody turned to look at Jenn.

"Don't tell me...My phone actually has service here?!" Jenn pulled her phone out of her pocket, reading the screen.

Incoming video chat from Ashley...


Hope you all liked that!

Otaku-chan: Oh my gosh. Thanks for reviewing like everytime. So motivational. As for the whole sibling thing...it's complicated. At least you are old enough that you both are in the same school. My brother is like a prodigy, and he graduated with a 98% average and played a ton of sports so he was really popular. And I didn't start highschool until after he graduated. So now everybody (including teachers) are like "Hey look it's Brian's little sister" every time they see me. ;~; It's like they don't even know my name anymore. But I'm making a comeback! I refuse to lose to him! (who am I kidding I've already lost)

Sarah123cs: Here you go! Glad you liked it! Thanks for reviewing (Extra motivation)