AN: Hey guys, so I'm currently looking for a beta for this fic. I thought I had one lined up but it looks to have fallen through at the last second. Anyway, I need someone who can look at a chapter after it's completed and help polish it up, such as help work on clunky sentence dialogue or OOC dialogue, brainstorm an idea or two, and catch a silly typo or mistake I might have missed. If you are interested, please shoot me a message. Thanks.

Chapter Ten: On the Back of a Hurricane

Kuina stood at the edge of their small vessel, looking out towards the cliffs of the Red Line, which were finally visible. Unfortunately, they still had not come up with a way to cross the heavily guarded stretch of land. At the moment, they were just floating aimlessly in the ocean, and both were going more and more frustrated.

"How do you suppose Teach made it across?" Kuina asked as Ace came up behind her.

"No idea," replied Ace. "But we gotta think of something. I'm not turning back now. We'll go over the damn thing if we have to."

"That would be insane. Trying to cross the Red Line like that would set off alarms all over the Grand Line. The admirals themselves would come after us" Kuina said.

"You're not afraid, are you?" Ace teased her.

"Of course not," Kuina said quickly, giving him a frown. "But I know I'm not immortal. I'm not delusional. Trying to do that by ourselves would be akin to committing suicide. We can't wage a war by ourselves Ace."

"And what if there's no other choice?" Ace countered.

"There has to be! People have made it out of the New World before. We just have to think creatively. Fishman Island is under Whitebeard's protection right? Is there some way we can get in contact with them? Get them to send up an escort or something?" Kuina proposed.

"We can't do that from here, we'd have to go back to the Moby Dick, and I don't want to waste that kinda time. I guess that's always an option though," Ace said with reluctance. "I don't know, there's got to be a quicker way."

The words had barely left Ace's mouth when something blocked out the sun, and the sky became dark. They both looked up to see ominous looking clouds all around them, and the wind was picking up to dangerous speeds. Just a moment ago the skies had been clear, but the Grand Line, and the New World especially, was infamous for its sudden, violent storms that would come out of nowhere. The next minute it was pouring rain, and Ace and Kuina's ship was being tossed around helplessly in one of the worst typhoons either of them had ever seen. The sky was black, like the sun had all but been extinguished. For Kuina, the danger was minimal, as she didn't even need the boat at all. Ace on the other hand couldn't swim, and he knew he was taking this risk when he came out here. If their boat turned over, he'd be in some serious trouble.

"Kuina!" Ace shouted over the roaring winds. "We gotta get out of this storm!"

"And how do you propose we outrun a hurricane with a sailboat?!"

"It's not a hurricane! Hurricanes are much larger!"

"I don't care what it's called!" Kuina shouted back, incredulous he could be concerned with semantics at this time. "What the hell does it matter?!"

"We can't outrun a hurricane, but we can outrun this!" Ace screamed, and then he used his Devil Fruit abilities to create a burst of fire out the back of the ship, propelling them forward like a shot from a gun. Before Kuina could react, they were travelling at the speed of a bullet through a wild typhoon.

"ACE! Are you insane?!" Kuina screamed as loud as she could, but it was no use. She couldn't even hear herself they were going so fast now.

Ahead of them the sea began to rise, forming what they knew as a tsunami. Kuina and Ace looked on in horror as a one hundred foot wall of water descended upon them, and they were headed straight for it. They were going way too fast to try to avoid it. They would have to go straight through it. Kuina had one chance, no time to stop and think it through.

She raised her sword, using all of her strength and energy in one monumental swing. Normally she would never put this amount of power behind on attack, because in combat it would be an all or nothing shot, but there was no choice here. The most powerful shockwave Kuina ever created shot out from her blade, so powerful a sonic boom erupted from the blast as she had broken the sound barrier. Kuina's attack and the immense wave collided with each other in an epic clash, and the attack won. Kuina cut straight through the tsunami, parting the sea as they sped through the middle of the wave.

"YEAH!" Ace screamed in victory as they rode on the side of water wall, having far too much fun.

Kuina couldn't help but smile as she barely heard his yell of excitement. What they were doing was incredibly stupid, but undeniably exhilarating. She had just decimated a tsunami that could have wiped out a city with one swing, so she had to admit, she was feeling pretty invincible herself.

But the storm wasn't done with them yet.

As they emerged from what was left of the monstrous wave, another obstacle had entered their sight. The typhoon had spawned a raging twister, one of the largest imaginable, and there was no cutting through this. Kuina had used up almost all of her energy with that last attack, and the wind was pulling them in. The colossal waterspout swept them up in seconds, lifting them high into the sky, but Ace was still propelling their boat as if rockets were attached to it. The two held on for their lives as they circled around the vortex, climbing higher and higher until they had reached the clouds.

Kuina had gone through some crazy stunts, but none even came close to matching this. Suddenly they were thousands of feet in the air, spinning around in an infinite loop as the storm raged on below, the twister carrying them who knew where. Above the clouds now, Kuina could see nothing but blurs of white and black. Now in the storm cloud, the deafening crack of thunder engulfed them from all sides. Trapped in the spinning vortex for who knows how long, the pair lost track of time entirely. Kuina once heard of a city in the clouds. She had never bought into the idea, but if there was ever a way to reach it, this would be it. All they could hope for now was for the storm to die before they did. They were trapped in the storm. Wherever it went, they went.

Then, just as their minds were starting to numb, they began to descend. Slowly at first, but then quickly. Soon they were below the clouds once more, circling swiftly down as the storm dissipated around them. Kuina couldn't believe they were still alive, but they still had to survive the impact of crashing back into the ocean. The vessel glided rather gently along the dying winds of the vortex before it vanished completely, and the ship began to freefall to the sea. It was a short drop and a sudden stop. Luckily for them they weren't too high.

Ace and Kuina lied on the tiny vessel, panting with exhaustion as the sky cleared around them. The sun was shining and suddenly it was a beautiful day once more. They had made it, and in one piece by some miracle. She managed to get up to her feet, the ship still rocking side to side from the impact of hitting the water. She looked out into the sea, at first seeing nothing around, but then something caught the corner of her eye. She turned to face it, and was struck dumbfounded by the sight.

"That was incredible!" Ace yelled as he sprang to his feet. "We rode a twister across the sky! And the way you cut that huge wave in half?! No one is gonna believe this!" Ace was ecstatic, for a moment he had totally forgotten why they were out here in the first place. They still hadn't figured out a way to cross the Red Line, but then again, they no longer needed to.

"Ace, is that what I think it is?" Kuina asked, pointing out to sea.

"Huh?" Ace turned, looking out to see where Kuina was pointing. Once he realized what he was looking at, he too couldn't believe his eyes. "No way. . ."

It was an island they had seen before. A massive forest floating in the middle of the ocean, with trees so large they made up little, smaller islands. Ironically home to both a pirate haven and the Marine headquarters, it also operated as hot tourist spot and a popular slave trading post for World Nobles.

Sabaody Archipelago. The pair would have to come here inevitably, but they never thought they'd get here this soon. It quickly occurred to them that the storm had passed right over the Red Line, carrying them with it. They had bypassed Fishman Island altogether and wound up in Paradise by pure chance.

"I. . . don't believe it," Kuina barely got out.

It was nothing short of a miracle. The unpredictable weather of the Grand Line had done them a huge favor. Not only had they made it back to Paradise, but they had made great time. If they were lucky, they may have even got there ahead of Teach.

"Ha!" Ace said triumphantly. "I knew it would all work out!"

"What? You had no way of knowing that would happen!" Kuina said back, turning to him quickly. "The chances of that happening were a million to one! It should have been impossible!"

"Yeah, but we're here aren't we?"

Kuina couldn't argue with that.

"Yeah, yeah we are here, but don't try to act like you saw this coming!"

"Whatever," Ace shrugged, leaving Kuina so he could turn the ship in the direction of the island. "I didn't think I'd see this place again," Ace admitted as they got closer and closer.

"Me neither," Kuina agreed. Until now, neither one of them had imagined a reason why they'd want to leave the New World.

"Hey Kuina," Ace suddenly said, something popping into his mind. "Can I ask you something?"

"Shoot."

"How did you get to the New World the first time? I know you don't need a ship to cross the ocean, but you must have had to use Fishman Island to the get to the New World, right? And you need a ship to get there."

"Yeah, you do. I hitched a ride," Kuina said with an odd tone, as if she didn't want to discuss this.

Ace sensed this, but pressed anyway. "With who?"

Kuina sighed, not answering at first.

"Kuina?"

"Doflamingo," Kuina finally said.

"What?" Ace asked again, thinking he hadn't heard right.

"Donquixote Doflamingo," she said again, more clearly.

"Why the hell would you ask him? Better yet, why the hell would he take you?" Ace asked incredulously, knowing Doflamingo's downright sinister reputation.

"I didn't ask him, he offered. You know what I used to do, don't you? I did some work for Doflamingo in the past. He runs a lot of underworld rings. After proving reliable, he grew quite fond of me, and wanted to keep me around for a bit. I had been with Doflamingo before we even go to Sabaody Archipelago. He treated me pretty well, and even offered me a position. I declined, because I still had my master's mission to carry out. He said there'd always be a place for me there though, if I ever changed my mind."

"No way," Ace said, astounded. "So you know Doflamingo? Well?"

"Yes."

"What's he like? I've never actually met the guy. Heard some crazy stories though."

"They're all true," Kuina said, clearly uncomfortable. "Every one. Unnerving, psychotic, ambitious, and unbelievably charismatic. He can talk you into anything, no matter how crazy it seems at the time. If he likes you, he's pretty friendly, so I never had much of a problem with him, but I've seen what he does to people that he doesn't. Piracy is full of moral gray areas, but he's something else. He's not evil, he's . . . amoral."

"I never figured you'd get involved with someone like that," Ace said, still not sure he believed it.

"Me neither, but once he starts talking to you, he pulls you in. He makes you think things, makes you question what you know. He can make his ideas sound like the right thing, no matter how monstrous they actually are. I did some things while I was with him, things I'm not sure how I feel about now. When I left him, I was afraid to go back. I wasn't sure I'd be able to leave. Not because of what he'd do to me, but because I would never want to leave. That kind of power he had over people, the power he had over me, it scared me," Kuina admitted, shuddering a bit.

"Why do you think he liked you so much?"

"He said he was a big fan of my master's work. He said he always looked up to him."

Ace shuddered himself, looking away. "That's creepy."

"Yeah," Kuina nodded, still looking ahead. "Yeah it is."

Ace decided the subject needed to be changed.

"You think we'll find Teach there?" he asked.

"Maybe, a lot of pirates go to this place, but we made it here so quick he might have not even gotten here yet. If that's the case, we'll have to wait for him."

"Let's hope we won't have to," Ace said.

Ace steered the tiny vessel into port, obviously choosing the lawless pirate zone over anything else. As soon as she was within reach, Kuina eagerly stepped off from the boat onto the dock, where a group of pirates were loitering around. They took notice to the tiny ship almost immediately. Ace tied up the boat while the pirates approached from behind. Kuina saw them coming, getting the feeling they were about to be harassed by some ignorant fools.

"Missy," said one with an amused, "Is that dinky little thing really your ship? How did you two even make it this far with that sad excuse for a vessel?"

"Shoo fly, go away," Kuina said dismissively, turning away.

The pirate and his friends grimaced, smart enough to know they were being disrespected at least.

"The hell did you just call me?"

"A fly," Kuina repeated. "An insignificant, weak, annoying little nothing. That's what I called you," she said, still not looking back at him.

"Kuina . . ." Ace said shaking his head, as she was already causing trouble.

"You dumb bitch, do you know what crew I'm in? Just who the hell do you think you're talking to?"

"A fly. Are you deaf, or just stupid?"

"That's it! You're dead!" the man bellowed, drawing his cutlass and quickly bringing it down on Kuina.

One second Kuina was standing with her hands at her sides, looking away. The next her sword was suddenly drawn and held in the air with one hand, easily holding off the pirate's weak attack.

"What?!" the pirate gaped in disbelief, his heart sinking when he realized he had attacked the wrong person.

"A little fly like you isn't even worth staining the edge of my blade, so why don't you just buzz off?" Kuina then used her other hand to thrust into the man's chest multiple times with two of her fingers, the basic form of Shigan.

Kuina's fingers pierced through the man like bullets. The pirate agonizingly coughed up blood, dropping his sword to the wooden deck. Kuina then spun around, delivering a powerful kick into his chest, blowing him clear off the dock and crashing straight through a building nearby. His friends looked on in shock and awe, turning back to Kuina with horror painted on their faces.

"I am Kuina the Raindodger, and this is Fire Fist Ace. We're both of the Whitebeard Pirates," Kuina announced.

"Oh crap. . ." said one of the pirates, now finally recognizing the both of them.

"We're looking for a man named Marshall D. Teach. Have either of you heard of him?" asked Kuina.

"No, no ma'am!" they both said at once, shaking.

"Then get out of here," Kuina demanded, turning away.

The two wasted no time in retreating with their tails between their legs, determined not to meet the same fate as their foolish friend.

"So much for keeping a low profile," said Ace, jumping on the deck. "Was that really necessary?"

"I will not treated like garbage by a couple of common thugs, and I'm not interested in hiding. I told you this before," Kuina said, starting to walk towards the town.

Ace followed her, hoping to be able to keep her temper under control. Kuina, despite all precision and grace, was really quite choleric. As strong as the two were, they would both have to watch their backs. Sabaody Archipelago can be a dangerous place to any visitor, no matter how strong you think you are, especially when you have as many enemies as the Whitebeard Pirates.

We're burning down the highway skyline

On the back of a hurricane

That started turning when you were young

The Killers-When You Were Young