February 12, 801 WG
Sabo and Dragon had set off after Sabo melted the ice that was trapping their ship. The ice would have broken up in a few hours but Dragon wanted to hurry out. He felt he had risked the Mendorans, and Lance, enough by staying the night.
It was only after the Revolutionaries had left that Luffy suddenly remembered that he hadn't introduced Sabo to Ann. While Ann had been staying close to them, she had not spoken nor interacted with Luffy the entire time Sabo was with them. Probably a safety measure she had learned while on the run with her mother. Interacting with children made her anonymous. Running up to her mother, or, in this case, her uncle would have identified her. Only after Sabo was gone did she run up and hug Luffy. It was then that the flighty captain remembered her, to his extreme embarrassment.
The crew was equally guilty. While they had spent the night talking about Luffy to Sabo they hadn't mentioned Ann, either. Just like Robin had said nothing about Sabo to Luffy when they reunited in Sabaody, the crew had thought that Luffy would want the honor of introducing her. They had then forgotten all about that in Luffy's sudden about face on disbanding the crew.
"Sorry, Luffy," said Robin even as she chuckled at the way her captain moaned and groaned about the mistake. "Just remember to introduce them properly the next time he comes."
Luffy had sighed and tucked his new vivre card into his pocket. He would have to find a way to signal his allies so he can hand out the new cards to them. Really, when did Sabo find the time to make a new one?
"Luffy we need to make a plan for how to face Law since you won't be able to take him head on," said Sanji. They were in the guest lodge because evening had fallen. It wasn't expected to be as cold as last night but it was still expected to be pretty damn cold.
The lodge was a single room and it was cramped with all eleven Straw Hats in it. The beds circled a large heater, a stove that sat in the center of the room. Quilts covered walls, windows and the door, hanging down to the floor from the thatch ceiling. Rugs covered the floor except for a circle of granite that the heater sat upon and it extended a foot out from it, probably to prevent rare sparks that escaped through the slotted grill from catching the floor on fire.
Ann had been put out when she heard her uncle wasn't returning to Lance's house with her. Luffy had knelt down and explained. "My friends and I are going to be talking all night. You'll sleep better at Lance's. Also Ann, when we ready the ship, we'll be heading to talk to Law. This is probably going to end in another fight so I want you stay here while we settle things with him."
"I don't wanna stay! I wanna stay with you, Ji-kun!"
Luffy was surprise. Between the way she dressed and the fun she seemed to be having with everyone, he thought she would want to stay forever. However, it seemed the loss of her mother made her possessive of her family. She would rather stay onboard the Sunny and away from her friends than stay here with them and maybe not see her uncle ever again.
Luffy sighed and took his hands into hers. "Ann you need to stay this time. I'll come back, we'll leave all your stuff on the ship so you know you can come back on when we return."
"I wanna go with you!"
"No," said Luffy, his voice firm but gentle, and Ann had teared up. Luffy hugged her and said, "I need you to stay safe. If you come I'll be too worried about what might happen to you. Something's going on with Law and whatever it is, I don't want you seen by it, in case it's a bad thing that could hurt you."
Luffy's reasons were sound but three-year-olds were not known for their reasonableness. Several minutes of sobbing and wailing and it only came to an end when Matilda came up to pry Ann from her uncle's chest. Luna had opted to stay with Ann and keep an eye on her since Luffy was doing much better now and had his crew to watch over him. Luffy had patted her head and thanked her for all her help.
Luffy sat on one of the beds, wrapped up in a comforter with only his head peeking out of the top. The rest were in their flannel pajamas and a few, like Nami, Robin and Usopp had their comforters over the shoulders.
"Now we need to figure out how we are going to approach Law," said Zoro.
"We know he's heading to Elbaf because Luffy told him the Fourth Road Poneglyph is there. Since he didn't get the coordinates from us, he'll have to get them from Elbaf," said Franky.
"Why didn't he take the coordinates from us when he had the chance?" asked Usopp. "I mean with Luffy down and us separated it should have been easy to steal."
"Except I kept the fourth set with me. I memorized it so it couldn't be stolen," replied Nami.
"I also have it memorized," added Robin.
"You did something like that?" asked Chopper, stunned.
Nami nodded. "Remember, I'm a thief who steals from pirates. After what happened with Pudding, I thought it might be better not to have the coordinates written down. If someone snuck on board to read the logs they could steal it from us while we were distract with a battle on shore. That's how I operated. I'd wait until my target was busy elsewhere before I went to steal their treasure."
"And Law was trying to kidnap you," said Sanji, his voice tinged with disgust.
"He found the logs and realized what I'd done," said Nami. "Law knows you, Luffy. Unlike Pudding, he realized you wouldn't have the coordinates yourself, I would."
Luffy's face clouded over at her words.
"That still doesn't solve how we are supposed to deal with him once we catch. Or how we are supposed to find him," said Jinbei.
"He's heading to Elbaf and he has several day's head start on us. Not to mention his ship travels underwater and is very swift when it needs to be," said Franky.
"However, the Road Poneglyph can't be read. He'll need a rubbing then Robin to translate it. He'll have to come back for us," said Brook.
"True, without Luffy's vivre card, he'll have to try to track us by coming here first and then determining which way we went," said Zoro. "I don't like the idea of spending anymore time here or doing anything to endanger the people who live here. Especially considering everything they've done for us."
"We're going to have to head toward Elbaf and hope we meet Law half way, then," said Robin.
"That sounds like the best option for finding him," said Sanji.
"Now we need to address facing him," said Jinbei. "Luffy-kun, you're still feeling shaky. You can't face him until he's been restrained. No matter how much confidence you have that Law didn't mean to kill you last time. I can't allow a second opportunity to test his sincerity."
The others voiced their own agreement to Jinbei's statement. Luffy sighed but voiced no objection.
"You know, I'm kind of surprised you haven't gone to sleep yet. These types of discussions usually put you right out," said Usopp.
Luffy looked at Usopp with narrowed eyes and said, "Now that would be a dumb ass move."
"Enlightenment from the other side. I think I'm terrified," said Sanji.
"You should be," mumbled Luffy.
"I think I may have an idea," said Nami. Everyone turned to looked at her. "It's going to be shocking that Luffy is alive. Law was certain Luffy died, so he'd going to be stunned when Luffy's shows up before him. If Law really is broken up by killing Luffy, then he'll take a lot of emotional damage if Luffy turns up alive. If he struck down Luffy because he was afraid of Luffy's strength, then he's going to be horrified that the poison didn't kill him. If we can bluff Law into think Luffy is completely fine then maybe he'll surrender or screw up trying to fight so badly that we can take him down. Either way, we'll win. Once we have him bound, we can take all the time in the world to question him."
"Good thing we still have the sea prism chains from when we kidnapped Caesar," said Sanji.
"How do we bluff him, when Luffy can't use his powers anymore?" asked Chopper.
"Bluffing involves confidence and faking out the other person," said Usopp with a smirk of superiority. This was his specialty after all. "Luffy doesn't need to show off. Since he isn't a show off that would be bad. Luffy just needs to come in like he's perfectly fine. The rest of us need to jump Law before he had time to recover from his shock. What Nami wants is to give us an opening. Law's tricky, we won't be able to overcome him easily unless he's rattled and making mistakes."
"Part of that bluff will need you, Luffy, to look like nothing happened," said Robin. "That means getting you a new hat to start."
"Huh…" Luffy wasn't happy with that.
"There's nothing to be done about it," said Nami in a chiding tone. "You ripped it so bad we can't repair it quickly. Look, the new hat is temporary, a prop to keep anyone from suspecting anything."
Luffy cringed in his blanket and didn't make any more noise.
"We also have to do something about your hair," said Franky.
"What about my hair?" asked Luffy, sitting back up in confusion.
Nami pulled a small mirror from her bag and walked over to her captain. She held it up to him. Luffy gaped in shock. The bangs on the left side of his head were white as snow instead of his natural ebony black.
"EH!"
"You didn't notice before now?" asked Nami, incredulous.
"No!" He rubbed the hairs as if he could rub off the white.
Nami sighed and returned to her bed, pulling the abandoned cover over his shoulders again.
"So we're going to have to dye it black and since we need your entire head to match, we're going to dye all the hairs black," said Nami.
"You'll just have to remember to present yourself as your usual confident manner when Law sees you. Hopefully that will give us the few second we need for Usopp to shoot him with the shackles," said Sanji.
"You want me to shoot him?" gasped Usopp, suddenly pale.
"You did a really great job in catching Caesar!," said Sanji with a grin.
"Oh boy…"