Title: On the Ocean Blue

Written By: NikoArtagnan

Genre: Fantasy/Friendship/Adventure

Rating: T, will eventually go to M

Summary: An outcast from Earth is flung headfirst into a hostile, unforgiving world, and finds themselves tagging along with a very particular crew of misfit pirates, and the boy who wants to be the King of them all. But this isn't the world of One Piece you thought you knew, and there are terrible things lurking in the shadows...

Chapter-Specific Warnings: racism, Kelly Does Not Deal With Issues Well, Or At All, grief, more sadism, borderline sexual harrassment

Chapter Ten:

Snow (Hey Oh)

DATE: Fuck, I don't know. Monday? I think? It's early, though. The sun's barely over the horizon

MY LOCATION: The Grand Line (Gods, that's so weird to write!)

PLACE: My room, the Going Merry (and that's even weirder to write)

So what comes next is Nami's illness, and getting Chopper as a doctor for the ship.

Not looking forward to it. Illnesses fucking suck, man. I remember when Nee-chan

…

Never mind.

Anyway, yesterday I got this drawing from Usopp

…

I can't

I can't do this

I don't want to remember

fuck

…

God damn it, pull it together.

~KL

(Below the word "Usopp", there is a picture of aforementioned sniper with his slingshot in hand, his dark hair wildly curly, and his eyes narrowed on some target in the distance. And below the word "Nee-chan" is yet another picture, this one of a woman with a close-cropped head of light red, almost pink hair, and an amused smile, a pair of large headphones wrapped around her neck.)

"GET OUT."

Kelly laughed as she danced back through the kitchen doors and onto the deck, dodging with inches to spare the shiny loafer that cut through the air where her head had been just seconds before.

She widened her lips into a girlish pout as the Straw Hats' cook stormed out after her, fire in his eyes and a spatula in his right hand.

"Che, cook-san, why're you so angry? It's the truth, after all," Kelly said, restraining the urge to giggle as spots of red rose in his cheeks.

"YOU-YOU-YOU-" He spluttered, hands curled into fists, knuckles white.

"I mean, all I was saying was that you're a pathetic little puppy trying to beg attention from women who are clearly so far out of your league it's a little ridiculous!" Kelly said with a nasty smile. "I mean, think about it, cook-san. It's not what you would call inaccurate, after all. That's all you really are, right?"

As long as she lived, Kelly would never forget the look that crossed Sanji's face at her words. There was fury, yes, and a decent helping of "I WILL END YOU NOW" along with it, but there was…

There was pain, too.

His lips were tight, a thin line that trembled slightly and his eyes shone with some dark emotion. She'd seen that look on her own face (too many damn times), back in her previous life, when the bullies got too much to deal with. Her tormentors had known exactly how to make their words hurt, too.

Something deep inside her was screaming What the fuck are you doing?! Remember, we like this guy and we want him to like us. Pissing him off is fine, but this…This is just fucking wrong, god damn it. This isn't us.

But something even deeper than that, something so deep that she was barely cognizant of the words forming, whispered sadly But he can't like us. Not now, not ever. We're monsters, freaks of nature. We have to be cruel to keep him away. If he ever got close enough to us like we want, if we ever cared about him like we did for Alex, for Beth, for Henry or Lien, for Mina, and he found out about what we are? ...He would turn on us, try to kill us, sell us. They always do.

And even if he did like us, we'd only get him killed in the end.

Kelly bit the inside of her cheek and fought to keep the sly, upturned curve on her lips.

"Darling, are you jealous of me?" she asked instead, properly incredulous. "I mean, I know I'm twice the man you could ever be-"

"DIE." The familiar anger leapt back into his eyes and he launched himself forward. Kelly stepped out of the way, making it appear like she was just barely gliding around each devastating kick. Kelly knew that Sanji was an extraordinary fighter and would only become more so, but the ease with which she could dodge his attacks was bordering on ridiculous.

But then again, she'd spent almost the entirety of the last decade running and fighting for her life against monsters that were (at least) on Vice-Admiral levels, so perhaps it wasn't that weird.

She mentally shook herself. Why was she angsting when she had a furious Sanji trying to knock her block off right in front of her? Christ Almighty, was she an idiot or something? Why wasn't she taking her chance to make those gorgeous blue eyes darken with pain?

She stepped into Sanji's guard and slammed as brutal a punch as she could manage (but one that wouldn't break him in half) into his stomach, folding the blond cook almost in half over her fist, expelling the air from his lungs in a painful gasp. She quickly hooked a leg around his and yanked, dropping him to the deck.

Then a thoroughly evil smile curved her lips for the briefest of moments and before she could talk herself out of it, she straddled the blond man and leaned in close. His eyes widened as she rested each elbow on either side of his head.

"This is cozy," she commented idly, smiling nonchalantly as Sanji froze.

"Wha-wha-wha-what the hell are you doing, you shitty bastard?!" He screeched, his voice rising almost to a falsetto from the shock.

Kelly mentally sniggered, and tried for a simper. She didn't know if it worked, but by the equal parts revolted and – hilariously – aroused look that scrabbled across Sanji's face, it certainly did something.

"You know, Sanji-kyun," she simpered, pursing her lips in a pout. "There's something I always wanted to tell you."

The blond man immediately began squirming, trying to get out from underneath her, but she slipped her legs in between his, spreading them wide and keeping them still. His hands curled into fists, but before he could do anything else, she pressed the pressure points on his shoulder, preventing him from moving his arms.

His eyes practically bulged out of his head as she smiled at him.

"Sanji-kyun," she said, resting her arms on either side of his head. "I really do have to tell you this. It's so very important, you know."

Sanji now looked both morbidly curious and revolted, and a very pronounced twitch had taken up residence below his left eye.

"Oh Sanji-kyun, why won't you just listen to me? It really is important-"

"Just tell me what the hell you want, you shitty pervert, and get off me!"

Kelly leaned back, tsking at the volume his screech had risen to. "So impatient."

The twitch was even more pronounced now, making Sanji's face appear as though it had contracted a rather severe case of Tourette's.

"What the fuck do you want, god damn it?!"

Kelly leaned in close again, so their lips were barely an inch apart, making sure she had a serious a face as she could manage with the mad laughter that was erupting from within her head.

"Sanji, I just wanted to say…"

She leaned towards his ear and breathed hotly over it, insanely delighted to feel a shiver wrack his body.

"I just wanted to say…"

'Wait for it…'

His body stiffened in involuntary anticipation.

'Wait for iiiiiiiiiit…'

"Your food's burning," she said, and pulled back to watch the show.

His face was frozen, a light dusting of red over his cheeks as her words sank into his brain. Then his face changed colors so fast it was like watching an Everlasting Gobstopper melt in super-fast forward.

"YOU SHITTY FUCKTARD!" He roared. Kelly let the man throw her off, cackling as he raced back through the doors of the kitchen. The faint odor of burnt food drifted out and Kelly clung to the railing, weak with laughter.

'I'm so going to pay for that,' she thought, clutching her sides as she roared. 'But it was so very, very worth it.'

DATE: Concerning the end of events on Little Garden

MY LOCATION:

PLACE:

Those giants were fucking Bad. Ass.

Jesus Christ, them cutting that ginormous hole in that freaky, over-sized goldfish was a thing of beauty, I'll tell you.

…

So, things were all right, in the end. (Well, not all right, but everything was okay.) The crew knows about some of my martial arts abilities and I admitted to it regularly enough when Luffy asked – with stars in his eyes – about what I was doing.

It was kind of annoying, but really it's not that unexpected, that my skills would have come out like this. I mean, if it wasn't for the events that're upcoming, then my blossoming "rivalry" (and the fact that I so clearly outclass him) with that blond dumbass certainly would have revealed my fighting abilities.

And really, that's not important, in the scheme of things. I could afford to reveal parts of my Rokushiki. There are three other things I have to keep secret.

My gender, my…Snake-y bits, and my Magic.

It's going to be hard enough as it is to keep that a secret.

~KL

Kelly yawned from where she sat – next to Vivi, who was looking out at the ocean with distant eyes - combing her fingers through Shere Khan's fur. It was a wonderful day, with an almost obscenely cheerful blue sky, dotted with tiny puffs of white cloud.

But Kelly kept her eyes on Nami, who was staring down at her legs, breathing unsteadily. Her cheeks were a ruddy red color, and sweat turned the hair at the back of her neck to a burnt umber. And the stench…Almighty God, it was horrendous, the sickly sweet, wretchedly familiar, rotting smell of the ill.

The Magus was grateful she could numb her own senses when she needed to. It was hard enough as it was not to gag.

Kelly noticed Nami start to tilt to the side, and mentally swore.

"Vivi…I'm sorry, but can you watch our h-heading? I'm going to my room," Nami said, trembling slightly.

"Of course, Nami-san," Vivi said, smiling. "Get some rest."

Nami pushed off from mast, and tried to take a step, but just dropped like a sack of potatoes to the deck. Vivi gasped.

"Nami-san!" she quickly hurried over to the fallen navigator. Vivi hissed as she put her hand to Nami's head and quickly yanked it away.

"Like an open flame," Vivi whispered, before raising her voice to a shout. "Everyone, come quick! We have a problem!"

The door to the kitchen opened, and Kelly heard Luffy ask what was going on.

"Nami-san has a terribly high fever," the princess told them, and Sanji's reaction was typical, if stupidly melodramatic. Kelly rolled her eyes as the blond man nearly knocked the rest of his cremates over so he could flutter his hands over the downed navigator. The rest of the Straw Hats gathered around their fallen crewmate, just looking at her.

Finally Kelly got annoyed by the fact that no one was doing anything, and shooed Shere Khan off her lap. She stood and made her way over to them.

"Move, ya idjits," she ordered, elbowing Luffy in the side. She scooped Nami into her arms as gently as she could, and stood again, letting the navigator's cheek rest against her shoulder. Her eyebrows raised in shock at the amount of heat the poor girl was giving off.

"Fucking hell," she whispered, and turned to Usopp and Luffy. "Yo, Usopp, I need a large basin full of ice cold water, and a smaller bowl full of thin ice chips. Along with that, I need several towels and a large bucket. Straw Hat, you help him out."

The sniper leapt up. "O-of course!" he said, and quickly hurried into the back of the ship, pulling Luffy along with him. With that done, Kelly turned to Vivi.

"Princess, you come with me. Roronoa, keep an eye on our heading. Don't fucking touch anything, 'cause I've heard stories about how bad you are at directions, but just make sure we're traveling in a straight line, and sound the alarm if anything happens."

Zoro nodded and left in the direction of the upper deck. Kelly winced, and turned to Vivi. "Vivi, you'll be helping me a lot, but check on him occasionally to make sure he doesn't get us lost, okay? That's the absolute last thing we need right now."

Vivi grinned and nodded.

"All right then, show me where Nami's room, then. Ah, cook," Kelly stopped and turned back to Sanji, only to take a step back when he practically teleported in front of her.

"Where do you think you're going with Nami-san?" he hissed at her.

Kelly rolled her eyes. "I'm taking her to her room, dumbass, so she can rest. I need you to-"

"Bullshit," he hissed. "You couldn't care about someone if you tried, you fucking abomination. All you want is to molest her."

Vivi gasped in shock.

The force of those words was like a blow to the stomach. Kelly fought to keep her face neutral as she looked at Sanji squarely in the face and tried to wrangle her voice under control. She knew she'd regret the incident this morning, but Jesus fucking Christ, she didn't think Sanji had this sort of shit in him.

"If you're so concerned about Nami's virtue in my presence, you needn't be worried," Kelly finally managed to get out, the words as flat and monotone as she could make them. She'd always been so good at hiding the hurt before – why was it so difficult now? "I'm not so desperate for a lay that I'd have my way with a deathly ill woman. Could you make some chicken soup or broth of any kind? The fever's going to dehydrate her rapidly." She turned around and looked at Vivi, and there must have been something truly awful in her face, because the princess's eyes went wide with shock.

Kelly swallowed the ball of fiery tears that had condensed into a hard knot at the back of her neck and nodded to the princess. "Show me to Nami's room, please."

-…The villagers stare at her, strange looks in their eyes, and it has every hair on the back of her neck standing straight up. She walks into the first available shop, where hopefully she can charter a ship to get her somewhere near the Grand Line – she has money now and everything!

The owner of the fishing store – Gerrant, it said on the sign outside – is a shorter, elderly man, with white wisps of hair curling over a mostly bald dome. There are deep wrinkles carved into his face by both time's inexorable passage and a great deal of laughter, and he reminds her so much of her paternal grandfather it hurts.

She'd never been close to her maternal grandparents – strict, traditionally racist Southern fuckwads who didn't approve of their only granddaughter "associating" with a "Negro wench" and the illegitimate child of a "Ruskie" – but she'd loved Ezekiel and Ursula Lewis for the short time she'd had them. She can still taste the red gumdrops her Papaw used to sneak her under the table before dinner, and she can still smell the spicy cinnamon that cloaked her Mamaw after she spent the morning crafting the best Thanksgiving feast this side of the Atlantic.

"Um…excuse me?" she says, and the man looks up from the newspaper with a smile on his lips.

"Ah, a cust-" Then he stops, and just stares at her like the villagers did, and something very dark and very awful passes over his face so quick she takes a reflexive step back.

"Um, um, sir, I was wondering if I could charter a boat to the next island," Kelly asks timidly, feeling goosebumps rise on her arms. Something inside her is screaming run, run, run! "I-I have money."

"I won't have any truck with your kind," he spits out, and Kelly blinks at the sheer vitriol in the man's voice.

"Excuse me? Sir, I don't-" She just barely dodges the beer bottle he throws at her, and it crashes against the wall, spilling beer and sending glass everywhere. She stares at the stain on the wall for a few seconds, uncomprehending, and turns back to the man.

"Dumb as a fish," he snorts and stands up. "Get the fuck out of my shop, you fucking freak, and go back to the sea where you belong. Your kind doesn't belong with humans."

Kelly can't believe what she is hearing, and looks down at arms, only to blanch in shock at the sight of the outsides of her arms lightly covered in soft silver scales. They hadn't been that big yesterday!

She starts to ask for a ride but is interrupted when a hand grabs the back of her shirt and hauls her up, her feet leaving the ground.

"Having problems, Gerrant?" A man's voice says behind her.

"Get that animal out of my shop, or I'll sell it to the World Government," Gerrant snaps. "I know you don't approve of slavery, Jossik, but it really is the only way to deal with these…things."

There is a sigh from the man holding her up. "I'll take care of it." Kelly is sat back on her feet, and then there is a large, warm hand pressing against the small of her back, propelling her out the door.

But she hears the last word the man says before she leaves the shop, and something hard lodges itself in her throat.

"Abomination of nature…" the man is saying with all the hate in the world in his voice, and Kelly realizes then that she's not going to have an easy time at all in this fucked up world she's landed in…-

Kelly could feel Vivi, Sanji, and Carue's eyes on her back as she worked, diligently mopping up sweat, spooning chicken broth and water into the shaking navigator's mouth, holding back Nami's hair when she retched helplessly into the bucket Usopp had fetched, keeping cold compresses on the weaker girl's fevered forehead, crooning softly all the while. Shere Khan curled up on the pillows next to Nami, and Gin was on the other side.

They'd managed to power through the storm they would have run straight into if Nami hadn't managed to turn the ship around, and Vivi had asked them all the find a doctor for Nami as quickly as possible, so then they could travel to Arabasta and save her people. The crew had been happy with Vivi's selflessness, and had agreed.

Kelly had seen the enormous cyclone Nami had managed to save them from, and had realized it then.

Nami was a Magus.

It was physically impossible, even on the Grand Line, for a human to have such sensitivity for the emotions and moods of the ocean.

It was possible that Nami was just strong for a human, but Kelly knew it wasn't that.

Nami had realized the storm was coming before even Kelly had. That should have been impossible, but it had happened. The fondness Gin and Shere had for the orange-haired woman was even more confirmation towards that, as Familiar(s) were generally a lot fonder of other Magi than they were of humans or other races, especially if the Magus in question was of the same element as the Familiar(s)' master.

Kelly felt herself smile involuntarily, gently smoothing out the blankets that covered the navigator and sitting back as the girl dropped into a hazy, semi-restless sleep.

Something inside of her was crying with joy. We're not alone! It was saying. Thank the Gods, we're not alone!

Kelly hadn't gone outside with Vivi to check on the others during the interlude with Wapol. They could handle themselves, and Nami needed her more.

She turned the sodden rag over so the cooler side lay against Nami's forehead.

Picking up the sick bucket so she could go empty it, she stopped as a soft, trembly voice spoke up from behind her.

"Ciel?" She immediately set the bucket back down and dropped to her knees beside Nami.

"D'you need something, Nami-chan?" she asked, her voice low and soothing.

"W-Why…Why are you doing this…for me?" the ruddy-cheeked woman asked. "You're not even a member of this ship, why are you doing this for me?"

Kelly paused, and leaned back. "Because…" she began, and the words strangled in her throat and Nami looked so tired, so confused -…Nee-chan's hair is matted to her face by sweat, and Kelly wipes it away, and whispered quietly "Cause you're my sister, Amber, and I love you bunches," and she tries not to see how gray and thin the older woman has become…-and Kelly sighed, pressing Nami back against the pillows.

"Sleep, Nami-chan. I'll take care of you."

She had a point to make.

Kelly knew she'd crossed a line this morning with Sanji which had led to him lashing out this afternoon, and while she understood that, some things had to be addressed immediately.

She cornered the cook in the kitchen as he was making some broth for Nami's dinner. He'd eyed her warily.

The Magus sighed. "I came to apologize," she told him, and fought the urge to laugh tiredly as his jaw dropped. "I said some things I regret. I'm not usually such a vicious bully, but sometimes I take a joke too far. I do regret the nasty things I said you this morning, and am sorry for them. I should not have said those things."

She squared her stance. "But that's all I'm going to apologize for. I know you care about your crewmates, so I understand, and you're a chivalrous man, so I respect your concern for them both. But I would never molest a dying woman. Nami is perhaps the one person on this ship I can say, without a shred of hesitation, that I like the most, that I care for the most, and that disgusting insinuation you made this afternoon was an insult to us both."

Kelly kept her eyes on Sanji's, her voice calm, and the insults away from her speech. She was here to make a point, not get in a fight.

"Nami is a beautiful woman, as is Vivi. I am not dead, so yes, I've noticed that. But I have all the respect in the world for them both, and would never do anything to them unless I had their complete and wholehearted consent. And Nami…" the words faltered in her throat. She hadn't wanted to give the Straw Hats anything of her old life, especially not of Nee-chan, but she knew she had to.

"I had a sister," she told him, as honestly as she could. "I had a sister, and I loved her very much. Nami is much like her."

Something soft gentled the hard, wary lines around Sanji's eyes. "What happened to her?" he asked, just as simply as her words had been.

"I lost her to illness." The words hurt. They hurt so much, like knives in her throat, but Kelly let them come. This was no longer about gaining Sanji's trust anymore. "I watched her waste away for days after the doctors tried everything they could to save her and failed. I watched her grow thinner and thinner every day, starving no matter how much food I tried to give her, even with ten IVs in her arms. She died in my arms, not even realizing who I was at the end."

Kelly rubbed a hand over her face. "Do you know what it's like, to watch someone you love waste away to nothing and know you can do nothing to stop it? And I'm watching this happen all over again with Nami-" She closed her mouth and sighed.

"That's all I wanted to say." She turned and walked out the door, heading back to her room as quickly as she could move without it seeming like she was running away.

Because she wasn't.

Really.