It's past midnight here, which means today is my birthday :DDD (I feel kind of old now) And, as it's my birthday, I'm updating most of my stories to celebrate ^^

Also, next Monday I'm starting exams, so I can't make any promises in regards to updates until at least mid-June. I might update something, but 'might' is the key word here.

In this chapter is the second scene that made me want to write Halloween, I think it's pretty easy to guess what I'm talking about here xD

Beta-read by Aerle :)

Chapter 34: Some changes here and there

They had decided, after some deliberation mostly on Thatch's part, that they would move the Halloween party to the beach of a nearby an uninhabited island. They had also decided, sometime during the party preparations, that hundreds of lit candles placed inside the pumpkins that had survived the small scale civil war that had followed their carving and hundreds of drunken pirates weren't a good combination to have on board of ships made primarily of wood.

Now, it was past lunch time of the day of the party, and Thatch was supervising the distribution of the decorations all over the beach. They were also preparing bonfires. It had been good news for the crew to learn that bonfires were a part of the celebrations, because pirates just didn't party on a beach without at least one bonfire. It just wasn't done. They would have made them even if they hadn't been part of the original celebration.

They were laying out tables throughout the beach for the food, food that consisted mostly of sweets that they had been making for the past couple of days.

It had been a really smart move to throw the party here, if Thatch said so himself. It would be pathetic if the feared Whitebeard Pirates were destroyed because they had been drunk and on a sugar high, and had accidentally set their own ships on fire in the middle of the sea.

Evelyne had heard this song before, it seemed to be a 'must sing' song in celebrations, but she hadn't paid it much attention until today. Now, however, Evelyne had decided she wanted to learn it. It was a nice song, and she was curious.

That was why, right now, Evelyne was trying to follow the others as they bellowed the lyrics of the song she had learned was titled 'Binks' Sake'. They had sung it so many times that Evelyne wouldn't be surprised if she actually managed to learn the entire song by the end of the night.

—

Marco glanced at Pops —Pops was dressed in a mere petty officer's uniform because it had been the only one his size, and that had resulted in a lot of jokes and mock-orders from people dressed as a higher-ranking marine— and smirked.

"Should we? Everybody is still conscious," Marco asked, looking around. It was early enough that there weren't even people throwing up. That wouldn't last very long.

Pops laughed.

"Go ahead, son."

Marco stood up and walked to a more central area of the party. He cleared his throat and took in a deep breath.

"All right, all of you, listen up!"

Silence settled around the beach, and everybody turned to look at him. Marco threw a quick smirk in Thatch's direction: he was the only one aside from Pops who could get the crew to shut up and he liked to rub it in, especially after Thatch's recent fiasco. It always took the other commanders more effort to gain the same attention.

"Move over there." He pointed past the tables, at a long line of rocks that some people had already occupied. "We're taking pictures."

People started to move, a little puzzled that Marco wanted them to move for the pictures instead of taking them as the party advanced like they usually did.

"Also," Marco continued over the ruckus that was starting up again, "the people from the other world should move away for now. The first few pictures go to the newspaper." The people from the other world were also dressed as marines —it seemed they had been unable to recreate any costumes from the other world that wouldn't simply be normal clothes here— but it was best if they stayed out of these first pictures, or they risked being unable to have a normal life if the marines ever identified them afterwards.

That last comment had everybody excited and laughing, and Marco saw more obscene gestures than he cared to count as people tried to settle on a good stance for the photo. Izo was setting the camera in place, and Marco saw Evelyne being dragged to sit with the other women from the first division. That was good, Marco thought. He wouldn't have put it past the marines to figure something out if she had been next to him in the picture. He knew they would scan the image for any new faces, and it was better that she entered the marines' radar as just another new crewmember.

Marco went to stand next to Thatch, who was practicing ridiculous faces worthy of a five year old. Marco raised an eyebrow.

"Can't you look serious? You're supposed to be a fearsome commander."

"Nah," Thatch waved a hand dismissively and wrapped an arm around Marco's shoulders. "Join me?"

"No," Marco said, though he might be planning to stick his tongue out a little bit himself.

"You're no fun."

Marco turned to the front, and saw that Izo was explaining to Maggie how to use the camera —by her face, Marco could guess it was a different camera to the ones Maggie was used to, because Marco knew they had cameras in the other world. That was a better idea than setting the camera to take the picture at a certain time. They always had to set it at least twenty times, because they were so many people that they had accidents in most pictures, so it was best to be safe and just take a lot of them in hopes that some would look half-decent.

When Evelyne woke up, she had sand in more places than she felt comfortable with —she spat some out, she must have swallowed it while asleep— and discovered she had somehow ended up cuddling with Kira —although it would be more accurate to say Evelyne had wrapped herself around her like a four-limbed octopus.

She rolled away and sat up, pleased to notice her head didn't hurt. Last night, after her first encounters with hangovers, she had decided to be careful about how much she drank. A look around proved that it was day already, and everybody was asleep still. Evelyne must have fallen asleep some time before dawn, but there had still been a lot of people awake. Now, what had to be four or five hours after dawn —she was learning to guess by the position of the sun, mostly because she had never gotten around to buying herself a watch— the party was over. She wondered why she had woken up, but her dry mouth —the sand hadn't helped— answered the question.

She stood up and walked over to the closest table. Beneath all of the tables, and also against many rocks and strewn over the sand, there were small fridges that had been filled with ice to keep the drinks cold. Barely any ice remained by now, but the water it had melted into remained somewhat cool still. She found a bottle of water —it was the only drink that was left by this point— and drained half of it in one long swallow. She capped the bottle and looked around the beach.

She spotted Marco sitting up against a rock, head bent down as he slept. She walked up to him and yelped when he —apparently not asleep after all— grabbed her by her free hand and pulled her down. She fell on his chest and almost let go of her bottle.

There were some mostly asleep complaints about the noise, but no one woke up.

"Don't do that," Evelyne muttered.

"Morning," Marco greeted her, ignoring her complaint.

"What are you doing awake?" she asked, because she could remember that he had been awake —drinking some guys under the table— not long before she had fallen asleep.

"I'm not hungover, I've slept enough."

"Right," she yawned, because Marco might be all right sleeping four or five hours —he always did, he barely ever slept longer than her— but she wasn't.

"Go back to sleep," Marco said.

It was amusing, Evelyne thought, that pirates had democracy. Even if said democracy consisted on hanging all the pictures that had come out fine on Halloween so that people could choose which ones they wanted to send. They could send them all, of course, but Thatch had told her it was more fun when they voted. Evelyne understood that soon, because many people wrote their vote on the papers stuck to the board in the mess hall accompanied by some ingenious comment about a crewmember that didn't appear in a very flattering way in one picture or another.

There had been some fights, too. She had come to understand that fights were just a daily occurrence and, as long as no weapons were drawn, it was best to just either ignore them or join them.

Finally, they settled for three pictures that were sent with a freaking seagull to the newspaper's headquarters. A seagull. She would have accepted carrier pigeons more easily.

Still, seagulls must be a good way of communication around here, because the next morning they were on the cover page, a picture with the whole crew dressed in the marine uniforms taking up half of it, and an article speculating about what they were playing at covering the rest of the page. There was a mention of the attack to the marine base, followed by some questions about the place's security and the level of strength of their officers. It wasn't anything too critical, certainly not in the level of criticism that most reporters would have used back in the other world, and when she pointed that fact out, Marco told her that the article was very critical as far as the newspaper went.

It turned out freedom of the press wasn't a very common practice around here, not with the World Government censoring so many topics —like the Tenryuubito or the most jarring defeats the government itself suffered unless they were impossible to hide, as was the case with the escape of some very dangerous pirate from Impel Down ten years ago.

Marco kept a copy of the article to add to his archives, and many other people decided to keep one, too, if only to hang it on the wall of their cabins to have a laugh. The picture was placed along with the crew's wanted posters on a board that covered half a wall of the mess hall.

Two days after the Halloween party, Evelyne stood in the middle of a mostly bare training room, looking around. They had used one of these for both physical and weapons training a couple of times, when it had rained or snowed too much for them to train outside. This one was considerably smaller than the ones she had been to before, and it was located on a lower deck of the ship, which meant it wasn't used as often. Behind the closed door at the farther end, she knew, was all the material that could be used, but they hadn't brought out any of it,

"Are you ready?" Marco asked when Evelyne hadn't said a word for two solid minutes.

She grimaced.

"Are you sure we can't bring out the mats? We did with the group," she asked, though she knew it was a futile attempt on her part. Marco had already told her they wouldn't be using them.

"You'll put in more effort if you know there's nothing to help protect you."

Evelyne groaned. After stretching yesterday, Marco had done an impromptu test of her hand to hand skills and, deciding she had the most basic part covered, had said he would take over her training in that area, telling her it would be best if she advanced as quickly as possible.

This was going to be worse than she had feared.

"If you start receiving glares," she said, "that's because they might think you're beating me. Which, technically..." she trailed off.

The annoyed look Marco aimed at her was both satisfying and horrifying, because it meant she couldn't stall any more.

"How's training with Marco going?" Shamus asked after their training session a week after Evelyne had started training with Marco. Much to Evelyne's dismay, the news had spread. She had known it would happen, whether she wanted it or not, because there was no way she could disappear from group training without it being noticed, but that didn't stop her from complaining. The most she had managed to do was convince Marco to train at the small training room instead of the deck, to avoid having an audience.

"Great. I'm starting to get used to being a walking bruise."

Shamus grimaced.

"I feel your pain. I've been on a couple group training sessions with Marco: he's freakishly strong, and you learn a lot more than usual with him, but he's harsh. Harshest commander, really."

Evelyne rubbed her right shoulder. She had landed on it wrongly yesterday while trying to dodge a kick —an attempt that had failed spectacularly— and it hurt now.

"I'm not surprised to hear that," she muttered.

"Is this going to become a habit?" Marco asked as he rubbed a balm on Evelyne's bruised back. She was lying in her underwear on the bed, arms crossed on the mattress and her chin resting on them. She turned her head to look at him over her shoulder.

"That depends, are you going to tune things down a little?"

Marco smiled, amused at Evelyne's new attempt to get him to ease down a little with the training. He knew he was being harsh, even for his usual standards, but he wanted her to be as ready as possible when the unavoidable next fight happened. If that meant he had to deal with the glares of the people from the other world —Evelyne had been right, some seemed to think he was overdoing things too much for it to be just training— or the jokes about how he was going to be cut off from sex, which weren't jokes all that much because more than once already Evelyne had been too sore to be in the mood, then so be it. He hadn't thought about it at first, but sending the picture from the party to the marines had reminded Marco that not all their battles were as easy as the last couple ones had been. It had been a very serious oversight on his part.

"No," he answered.

Evelyne groaned.

"Then keep up the massage. You're good at it."

"Are you sure you're all right?" Julia insisted. She had dragged Evelyne to the girls' cabin a while ago for a 'girl talk' Evelyne had been doing her hardest to avoid, which meant she was now sitting on a bed surrounded by either concerned or simply curious girls —their state depended on how much they liked Evelyne.

"Positive," Evelyne answered for what had to be the tenth time in so many minutes. She appreciated the concern, sort of, but she was growing tired of this.

"Oh, really?" Julia's friend, Britney asked sarcastically. She was clearly part of the 'curious' group, which didn't stop her from getting in Evelyne's business. She grabbed Evelyne's arm and pushed the sleeve of her hoodie up, revealing the purple bruises on her arm. "Mind explaining this, then?"

Evelyne shrugged with her free shoulder.

"I tried to stop a fall with that arm." That one had been bad, bad enough that Marco had agreed to cut the training session short. Then Evelyne had jokingly asked him to 'kiss it better', and Marco had proceeded to do a very dirty version of the request.

"You tried to stop a fall," Britney repeated slowly. "And you say it as if it's normal."

"It kind of is here." Evelyne had watched some people train and had soon reached that conclusion. She had also understood that they were going easy on the group training Maggie and the others were doing. Besides, she had started to realize she was progressing faster now, especially her reflexes. It had showed on her training with Shamus, mostly. That didn't stop her from complaining and trying to convince Marco to slow down a little, though.

"You can't be serious," Britney spoke again. She was starting to veer on sceptical incredulity. "As everybody here fights, it's normal if your boyfriend beats you up?"

"Lover," Evelyne corrected automatically. "And it's not that," she said, even if she knew it didn't matter.

Evelyne threw a glance at Maggie, who was sitting on the bed to the left. She hadn't said a word, which was very strange of her. Neither had Amanda, but that fit her character much better.

"So, how come you didn't take part in the interrogation?" Evelyne asked Maggie later that day, a few hours after she had managed to escape said interrogation.

"I didn't agree with them, I guess," Maggie answered, and Evelyne raised her eyebrows. That was unexpected. Maggie had been very firmly in the 'these guys, and especially your boyfriend, are crazy' team right after the battle at the start of October. She had relaxed considerably since then, that was true, but Evelyne had expected her to lead the charge —again— if the girls decided that Marco was beating her —again.

"Really?"

"Yeah. It's just… you're weird," Maggie said, and Evelyne wasn't sure whether she should be offended or flattered by that comment. She decided to ask.

"Weird how?"

Maggie sighed and looked at her.

"Remember when I told you I'd misjudged you?" Evelyne nodded. She remembered that conversation. "It turns out, I'd misjudged you even more than I thought I had. In your situation, with that level of fighting, the weapons, the piracy, and all that, I'd be freaking out, but you're okay. You even like it, and I may not be able to understand why or how, it's weird as fuck, really, but you like it. And that's made me think: these guys may look a lot like us, but this is a different culture, with different customs and different values, and I guess the whole criminal aspect just accentuates the difference, so it makes sense that what seems so weird to us is actually normal here. And, somehow, you find it normal, too. That sort of explains why you were so odd back home."

"So," Evelyne said, not sure she understood where, exactly, Maggie was going with this, "you're okay with this… because I'm okay with this?"

"Sort of," Maggie agreed. "If I saw you as some sort of victim, or trying to be okay when you really were not, I would be trying to drag you away. But the thing is, you are okay, really, and I'm no one to butt in and try to change it just because I know I wouldn't be in the same circumstances."

To be continued