Curiously watching the abrupt retreat of the red-haired man from the table, the waitress returned with her tray and arms laden with food for both booths. Laying the crew's plates down to their eager cheers she then returned to their captain, addressing him nervously and fiddling with the pockets of her apron as she avoided his eye contact. "C-Can I get you anything else?"

Law looked at Nayla in silent offering but she shook her head. "Just another drink for the lady."

Watching her sigh a little at her ignored decline and sit back more comfortably against the booth's padded bench, he decided that there had been enough pleasantries and that she was relaxed enough now to be caught off guard. Keen to see her response to his upcoming question, he leant back in his own seat so that he could observe her fully. "So, Nayla-ya, where did you get that interesting tattoo of yours?"

To her credit, she hadn't flinched a muscle but it was exactly that that made her suspicious to him. Up until now, any mention of something that may have insinuated someone had looked at her in a state of undress had earned a reaction from her. Now there was none, only a practiced response to a question that she had perhaps anticipated from him.

"Hmm, you have a tattoo?" Penguin asked, looking her over in an attempt to spot it.

"Yeah, on my lower back. Just a basic, meaningless tribal pattern I got on my travels, nothing special." Drinking a mouthful from her glass, Nayla realised with a surprised blink that Law had noticed she'd nearly finished it before she did.

"You have a tramp-stamp?" One crewmate from the booth behind Penguin asked, whipping his head around to look at her.

"Oi, watch what you say, idiot!" The one that had been fighting with Shachi smacked him upside the head, making him turn back to their own table to continue the argument the action had just provoked. She wasn't sure if he was scolding him for revealing their eavesdropping or for inadvertently calling her a tramp.

Choosing to ignore his crew's antics, Law pressed his matter of interest instead. "On your travels? Which country was that?" He hadn't ordered a meal of his own but casually reached across the table and took one of the French fries off of Bepo's plate, popping it into his mouth nonchalantly as he watched her. The bear paid him no mind and continued to thoughtfully munch away at his mouthful of fish listening intently, as curious as his captain to understand what they had both seen.

Feigning thought for a moment, Nayla eventually shrugged her shoulders. "I'm not sure, I've been so many places and I never stay too long. It was such a long time ago."

Making it clear she wouldn't talk about it willingly and that she probably understood why he was asking about her tattoo, Law guessed then that he'd get no honest answers without directly confronting her about it. He looked at her thoughtfully, matching her unwavering eye contact as they each tried to assess the other's knowledge in a silent, falsely neutral exchange.

"How come you travel so much? Are you a bounty hunter, Nayla-chan?"

Thankful for Penguin's interjection and change of subject, she turned back to him. "Well, no not really. Though I've done it a few times here and there when I've needed to." Her mood sank a little as she thought of Zoro, sank a lot when Law brought him up directly.

"I take it that's how you know Pirate Hunter-ya?" Realising his use of present and not past tense when talking about him, her mood lifted a little bit at Law's apparent sensitivity or belief that her friends had survived.

"Yeah, we were accidentally hunting the same target. Got in each other's way, ended up fighting amongst ourselves whilst the bounty escaped." Laughing a little at the memory and at the look on Zoro's face when he'd realised it, she smiled fondly at the memory as she played with the colourful parasol sat on the rim of her glass. "We bumped into each other a lot after that, before he became a pirate that is."

"So if you aren't a bounty hunter...are you just a pirate without a crew?" Penguin asked in thought looking to his side as a decidedly less pale Shachi retook his seat next to him, avoiding eye contact with the woman smiling slyly and his captain glaring sternly at his return.

"No, I'm more of a...mercenary, I guess? For lack of a better word."

"You're a gun for hire for the right price." Law didn't ask, stated.

"Don't judge me, pirate." Nayla shot back with an indignant snort.

'Touché,' Law reached over and stole another French fry from Bepo's plate, smirking at her temperamental response.

"I do pick and choose what jobs I take. I don't take on any I can't agree with, no matter how much money I'm offered for it." She stated proudly, chin up as she crossed her arms.

"Oh? A gun for hire with a moral compass? Good for you, much more respectable than a pirate." He mocked around the fry he was chewing, enjoying how easy it was to bait her temper.

Sensing the rise in her annoyance as she glared at his captain, Shachi chose that moment to rejoin the conversation in an attempt to defuse it. "U-Uh...so...what? Stuff like, fighting on behalf of other people?" He hoped he had been away from the table long enough for Law's irritation with him to have subsided a little but his captain spared him another stern side-glance as he spoke, making him flinch and think that perhaps he had spoken too soon, literally.

"I'm not always hired for fighting, sometimes people will pay me for my other services too."

...

Deadpanning at their silence, Nayla was unsure whether to facepalm over her phrasing or their perverse interpretation of it. Even Law had stopped chewing to raise a brow at her. "Minds out of the gutters, wow."

"Wouldn't being a mercenary make you a fighter in large scale conflicts?" Looking up at the large man, she realised this had been the first time Jean Bart had joined the conversation since she'd sat with them. It'd seem he'd been uninterested in the trivial nonsense but was interested in talk of combat at least.

"Sometimes but it's not always large stuff, I might take a job for just one target or information retrieval or whatever really...Jack of all trades, I guess. I'll do almost anything, depends what I'm asked for and how much I'm offered."

...

"Knock it off." She sighed out, glaring half-heartedly at the perverted faces looking at her from across the table. Law on the other hand was quietly calculating her worth as an assassin or her skills in espionage whilst watching as the waitress returned with a fresh cocktail for her and set it on the table, removing her now-empty glass.

"So, Nayla-ya, what job brought you to the Grand Line?" He wondered how formidable she was as a fighter after what she had just told them. He couldn't judge much from what little he had seen of her facing Kuma, she'd been unarmed and too far away to watch clearly.

Apparently she was an open book on most other topics, probably happy to be willingly talkative about anything other than her tattoo now that he had made it clear to her that he'd noticed the odd behaviour of it. Unsure if she was usually as willing to share information about herself under normal circumstances, Law decided to take advantage of it, not wanting to miss the opportunity to pry a little and satisfy his other curiosities.

Her lips pulled into a mild scowl at the question though. "Well...I'll be straight with you guys I guess, seeing as you've done so much for me already...I honestly just don't want to share that information with you. My last job involved a big name and if you guys work for him then I'd just be screwing myself by saying anything about it." She muttered taking a long sip of her new drink.

Frowning slightly, Law turned to face her completely. "I only work for myself, I don't take orders from anyone."

A little taken aback by his change in demeanour, Nayla took in his obvious displeasure at the suggestion that he should be below anybody, glancing at the others at the table for confirmation of what he'd said on the faces of his crewmates.

"You can trust us Nayla-chan." Penguin offered her a reassuring smile as he leant back and relaxed in his seat.

Contemplating the men in the booth for a moment, she decided that she wasn't able to detect any insincerity before finally speaking again. "Well...actually I'm kinda ticked off with my last job. I walked out on it before it was finished and before I was even paid. So the guy that hired me probably isn't too happy with me right now, been kinda ducking him for a while." She rubbed over the still-tender part of her scalp subconsciously as she spoke.

"It was a little complicated but let's just say there is a small country some way down the Grand Line in the middle of a civil war right now. Basically the rulers and the army versus the people. Problem was, the rulers and the army obviously had a huge amount of artillery whilst the people had little to none so they were being slaughtered. They managed to get financial aid from other countries that supported their cause and used it to buy weapons from a large time dealer but were struggling to hold their own waiting for them to arrive."

"So, what was your job?" Shachi asked, leaning his elbow on the table but keeping his legs a careful distance from her own this time.

"My job was to help them out until the shipment arrived then take my leave. I was hired and sent in by the guy they bought the weapons from, as a 'token of good will' whilst he was preparing their order for them. Problem was their shipment was commandeered and stolen by the rulers' side of the conflict, they ended up with double the amount of artillery than when the war had begun."

"How did the weapons dealer react?" Law asked thoughtfully, not liking where he felt this story was going as the most prominent arms dealer on the Grand Line came to mind.

"He took no responsibility for it and blamed the peoples' side for not ensuring the ship arrived safely on their end. He told them he could send another shipment but that he had other clients that were higher on his priority list and that he was now low on stock so it would cost them more this time around. The people were so desperate, they paid him nearly double what they had for the original one and my contract was extended until the second shipment could arrive safely."

Plucking the new miniature umbrella from her drink, Nayla twirled it between her fingers as she contemplated how to phrase the rest of the story without giving away any details that may be dangerous for her.

"I had a bad feeling about the whole thing. I just found it too hard to believe that the dealer I was working for wouldn't have had good enough security on the original ship to fend off an attack, so I did a little snooping...Found out the first shipment hadn't been hijacked by the other side at all. The guy had sold the original shipment twice, to both sides and purposely had it delivered to the rulers' side of the conflict to make the peoples' side more desperate - just so he could sell them that second shipment at double the rate."

"Whoa...sleazebag." Penguin muttered.

"So ultimately, the guy sent two shipments of weapons but got paid double their worth by manipulating the situation and there I was, being used like a stupid ass to make sure the side he was scamming didn't get wiped out before they were able to pay him the second time." Finishing the last of her drink with a generous mouthful, she placed the empty glass back down on the table, tossing the parasol into it. "Jerk lied to me and made so much money off of the lives of those people. He didn't give a rat's ass that his deliberate delay caused thousands more of them to die unnecessarily and then bled them dry of what little money they had left...I ducked the rest of that job, wanted no part of it. Travelled on the first ship out of there. Bumped into Zoro and his crew by complete accident on the next island and hitched a ride."

"You left in the middle of that job? What about the people you were fighting for?" Bepo asked, halfway through his dinner.

"I don't mean to sound cold but I wasn't fighting for them, I was fighting for the broker I was hired by. It's a shame they were getting killed but it was their choice to start a civil war completely unprepared and to get themselves into that situation in the first place. Their goals, reasons or whatever aren't really my business."

"The weapons dealer must not have been too happy about it though." Shachi muttered, grimacing as he got a fork to the back of his hand when he tried to sneak a French fry off of Bepo's plate whilst the bear was distracted.

"Apparently the second shipment arrived about two days after I left, so in the end it worked out fine. I did the job he wanted and didn't stick around to get paid for it, it was win-win for him. I'm mostly ducking him because he wants to rehire me for other things but I don't want to work for such a shady bastard." She sulked, crossing her arms in front of her. In Law's mind, it looked very much the pose of a spoilt child saying 'I don't wanna' as he took in the puffed out cheeks and pursed lips of her face...The fact her feet barely grazed the ground when she sat all the way back didn't help either.

"If you have to duck him then I'm guessing he's the kind of guy that's hard to say no to then, huh?" Shachi mumbled, rubbing the back of his injured hand gingerly as he glared at the furry first-mate.

"Yeah, kinda."

"Nayla-ya." The solemn tone of his voice made her look at Law, he seemed concerned, the playful smirk long gone from his features. "What was the name of the weapons dealer you were hired by?"

She knew better than to dare speak the guy's name. His organisation and reach in the underworld went phenomenally wide and she had no doubt there would be at least two if not three or more patrons in the tavern at any one time that would have connections or dealings with him in some form. She'd already decided to not give the country's name nor the name of the man when she started her story but there was something about the expression Law wore and the tone of his voice that made her resolve to not tell him weaken considerably. It was almost as if he already knew who it was.

Looking around the tavern a little nervously, she wondered whether or not to answer the question. Finally turning back to Law and making eye contact, she took her time in studying the seriousness reflected in his steel grey eyes before finally conceding, uncrossing her arms and placing her hand on the side of his face.

Turning his head gently to the side, Nayla inwardly enjoyed the feel of the smooth, warm skin over his shaven jawline and the tickle of the soft, black sideburns on her fingertips. Leaning in closely, she placed her other hand to his shoulder, making Law hope that she'd say anything other than the name he was expecting to hear so that he could have processed - even enjoyed the feeling of her proximity and the slightest brushes of her soft lips against his ear as she whispered into it.

"Joker."

Law's breath left him. He wasn't able to tell if the wave of coldness that suddenly washed over him was from a sense of dread or because she had pulled the warmth of her body away from his. Stunned he found his mind suddenly a whirr, flooded with hundreds of questions simultaneously. How close was she to Joker? Had she met him? Did Joker trust her? Had he hired her to spy on him? Was their meeting really just a coincidence? Or was it just some elaborate plot by the man to spy on Law? Or had she been sent his way to mock him, tell him that he was aware of Law's ideation of taking him down? Was he or his crew in danger?

"Whaaat? No fair! Tell us too!" - "Yeah! Whisper it into my ear too Nayla-chan!" Silencing the two across the table with a glare, Law then turned his gaze back to Nayla, analysing her reaction to his own - knowing that she would have felt his tension and anxiety from her proximity, even without looking for it on his face as she was doing now.

"So, you do know him."

"…Yeah, I do."

Meeting her eyes, he couldn't read any mockery or malice in them or her body language and tone. Not a trace of ill-meaning deceit or hidden intentions to be found. Her being sent by Doflamingo didn't add up if he thought about it calmly. The man was as manipulative as it came and had an extensive web of subordinates and resources at his disposal to make just about any situation he wanted come to fruition with enough planning…but it was unlikely Joker had sent a woman in with the Straw Hat crew, or anticipated he would be on the archipelago at the same time as them, or predicted the auction house incident, or expected that she'd attack a fellow warlord and end up critically injured at his feet or that he'd have even acted on it and taken her in. There were too many things in this scenario that even Joker wouldn't have had the power to be able to foresee and control. Then there was the fact that Nayla had tried to avoid him, not seek him out…

Law relaxed a bit as he realised it was unlikely Doflamingo had sent her…but, in that case…Could she be useful? How many times had she worked for him? Was Joker still trying to get her to work for him? Could she contact him at will? Did she have useful links and information about his dealings and the family? Their weaknesses? Their future plans? Could she be an asset in forming his own? This chance meeting with her had the potential to be a huge accelerant and opportunity to further his own ambition of fulfilling the dream of the man he owed his life too.

It may not have been the reason Law had chosen to pursue her initially, he had no way of knowing about her connection to his current target, but he was glad then that he had. His instincts were always right.

Nayla watched him with concern, this had been the most expressive she had seen him. Law's face had gone from apprehension, to one that looked as though he may be contemplating killing her to the devious smirk that was now slowly growing on his face as he gazed at her. The tense eye contact, silence and now the creepy grin he was sporting was extremely worrying. Sensing something impending from him that she knew she wouldn't like she decided that now would be a good time to retreat.

"W-Well, gentlemen." She said standing to leave and pulling her eyes away from the calculative stare of Law to look at the others at the table who had been watching the interaction between them curiously.

"Thank you for the drink but I'm getting pretty tired, had a long day so I'll head to bed…but it was really nice getting a chance to meet you all and to thank you for everything. I won't ever forget it, I owe you my life." She smiled, leaning over the table in-between Shachi and Penguin, wrapping an arm around each of their necks in a hug and planting a soft kiss to each of their cheeks before turning to Bepo. Anticipating his own, Bepo happily leant towards her returning her hug with open paws and allowed her to plant a kiss on the top of his head. Laughing at the stark contrast of her lipstick on his white fur and the way it had tickled her lips, Nayla half-heartedly ran her thumb over it in an attempt to wipe some of it off for him. Assuming the large, stoic man next to the first-mate was unlikely to lean down for her she settled for blowing Jean Bart a kiss instead.

"I hope you guys have a safe journey, I'll be looking forward to reading about you in the papers too. Goodnight guys, take care!" Moving to leave, she turned her back on the stunned duo that seemed to be melting into a puddle halfway under the booth's table as they incoherently bid her goodnight. Waving to Jean Bart and Bepo over her shoulder, she made eye contact with Law one last time. "Try not to look so creepy in your next bounty photo, would ya, Law?" She teased, matching his smirk as she walked past him and towards the staircase.

Hoping she'd get away from the table with a cheeky, well-meaning goodbye. "Nayla-ya." Was futile and hopeful at best she realised. Stopping with her foot on the first step, she hesitantly looked back at him, something unnerving in his tone as he called her name. The rest of the tavern seemed to have been tuned out to all of her senses in that moment as their eyes met again.

"Be sure not to go anywhere." His dark grin, thinly guised warning and unspoken promise that this wouldn't be the last time she saw him hung heavily in the air between them.

Turning around slowly, she silently resumed her ascent up the stairs as her heart worked its way in the opposite direction towards her gut. Just when she thought they had come to some sort of civil understanding, Nayla suddenly found herself feeling as she had done on the first day that they had locked eyes. The unmistakable glint of madness she had just seen in his reminding her of just how dangerous and unpredictable Law might still turn out to be.