I slept badly. I would go so far as to say that if there was a time I slept worse in this particular way, I couldn't remember it.

While I could write off nightmares as a cost of doing business in a very bloody business, my dreams had always been a bit screwy. Between a childhood spent talking to me, myself, and I in lucid dreams, the turtle sitting in my headspace for the other half of my life, and the existence of the Tailed Beast mind-skype, my head was crowded at the best of times. I had precious few normal dreams, and the last one I remembered involved an old-fashioned fisticuffs brawl with a starfish.

This situation decided not to follow that pattern. Starfish or otherwise.

YOU HAVE BEEN CALLED.

Just like that. No dream scene, no mindscape—just words drilled into my head like they'd stomped in without checking in with the ears first. Sound didn't even get a say.

YOU ARE THE THIRD.

I tried yelling back that whoever was sending the message needed to take a number, but no sound came out. Annoyance bubbled to the surface of my mind, redoubling in strength when the second attempt produced no results either. So much for lucid dreaming.

YOU WILL ASSEMBLE THE NINE.

Oh fucking hell n—

And then I woke up.

It was kind of a shitty dream.

I groaned and rolled over, out of my nest of blankets and onto a dusty floor. I managed to avoid getting splinters in my face through sheer luck, because nobody had planed, polished, or indeed swept the floor in quite some time. Then I wriggled out from under the table I'd been using as a last-ditch guard against the effects of spontaneous roof collapse, rubbing my face with the inside of my forearm.

I sat there, blinking, as I spotted something amiss. My left arm and the epic ink adorning it were the same as ever, my right wasn't supposed to have anything on it other than the occasional kenjutsu scar. Instead, a black band encircled my wrist like one of those carnival bracelets that were always a complete pain in the ass to remove without scissors. Rather than meeting neatly on the inside of my wrist, the band broke and left a neat square inch free. And in that spot, glowing, was a neatly drawn character for "three."

A chill crept up my spine.

"Being Screamed at by Some Asshole, A Concert in C Minor," was officially the shittiest dream I'd had in a very long time.

I tried digging my fingernail carefully under the band, but the damned thing sat flush against my skin like I'd gotten another tattoo. Being solid black, I couldn't see any seal lines to analyze. And it was still fucking glowing. Purple, even.

I shook out my wrist as the glow faded, but my nerves refused to settle entirely. Having evidence that I was being shoved around on a cosmic shuffleboard court by powers unknown was rather uncomfortable.

And then, finally, I looked out the door and saw nothing but gold and red in shadow. I blinked twice, and so did it.

There is a ship, Isobu said, as I tried to figure out how the fuck he'd gotten on land, on the opposite side of town from the sea. Then what he'd just said got through to my brain, and I gave up on that thought.

What does it look like? I asked, while gathering up the blankets and tucking my very meager belongings into one of them like a sling.

Isobu shimmered in place, and then poofed away as I finally recognized the genjutsu for what it was. In his place, and significantly smaller, Isobu projected the image of a rotund ship with a sort of…whale motif. He slowly rotated the projection like it was a three-dimensional diagram, and I approached to poke at the image.

I wasn't familiar with figureheads, not really, but was pretty sure I'd never seen one take up the entire front of a ship since the heyday of the trireme. Said figurehead was in the shape of a white baleen whale, though sadly there was no matching tail at the stern. It had four masts, with the shortest one in the back and the other three four sails tall. Each of the three taller masts one was topped with black flags flying the same symbol that Isobu and I had noticed on the buoy last night. Overall, it was a bit tubby-looking despite both the implied size of the ship, given the humans Isobu had projected running around on the deck, and the way the sides bristled with cannons.

…How can you even see that? I wanted to know. Isobu couldn't have been on the surface with them, or else the ship probably would have started shooting at him already.

Artistic license. Isobu cut the genjutsu, then simply sent me a mental snapshot of what he could actually see: the bottom of the ship, complete with the little fin things that helped them stay level in the water. I still wasn't sure what they were called. And those are an extension of the keel.

Why do you know that? I paused. Also, what the hell is a keel?

I have spent hundreds of years in the ocean, Isobu told me with all due bluntness. And I have been attacking ships for most of it. It pays to know where an object's greatest weakness lies.

…I don't know what to say to that. I walked outside, shading my eyes with my left hand as I peered out to sea. Next time I went to a beach, I was bringing binoculars. So I take it they're not hostile? I mean, you didn't rip the keel out and let everyone drown.

I did not rule it out. Isobu lurked underneath the approaching ship like the ultimate tribute to Jaws, only with a shell. I am merely keeping my options open until you inevitably botch first contact.

I groaned aloud. I'm not that bad.

You are worse.

Oh, shut up. I spent so much time talking to Isobu that nearly everyone in Konoha thought I was either completely expressionless and judgmental or not paying attention at all. The latter crowd were generally more correct, because ignoring Isobu bordered on impossible. All the same, I refused to screw up something so basic as greeting people in a brand new place.

I doubt they can see you as you are, Isobu remarked. As he settled onto the seabed to wait, a big green sea serpent passed in front of his face, blanched, and swam rapidly away.

I could try lighting one of those SOS bonfires, but… Well, if the crew was heading here already, what was the point? I ran a hand over my face and decided that I could at least do the bare minimum to look like the marooned sailor the pirates probably could expect to find. As opposed to a misplaced human superweapon.

Though all bets were off if I felt threatened. There were limits to how much I would tolerate from other people before just deciding to take to sea via Isobu and leaving burning wreckage in our wake.

If you are going to speak with these humans, I suggest keeping an open mind, Isobu suggested lazily.

Easy for him to say. Aside from me, he didn't deal with people regularly. When he did, his past go-to options included "kill them all" and "kill almost all of them, but leave enough to spread rumors." Only his siblings consistently required more effort from him than that. And, well, okay, he was a pretty effective communicator when it was just us.

Not so open that my brain falls out, I argued, then stopped to smack myself in the forehead. I let myself get distracted way too easily. Okay, no, you're doing the thing again where you play devil's advocate to everything I say. I want to see what this big ship is for, who's on it, and what they're like. I am going to set a bonfire to get their attention in case I don't have it already.

And without waiting for Isobu to call me on not walking the walk, I set to work. Scrap wood, loose shingles, and whatever else I could find that wasn't structurally important to anything went into the pile, which I ignited a careful distance away from any of the remaining buildings. Of all the silly things I could be proud of, the fact that I'd made a proper beach fire was probably one of the more mundane ones, but I'd take it.

I sat down at the fire and started reheating one of the fish from the day before, on a stick. I'd eaten the other silvery fish yesterday with no ill effects, so they were probably safe for human consumption. If they turned out to be poisonous or something, well, too late now.

They just launched a smaller boat. I count three people on the shore party, Isobu reported. He sent me a quick image that almost overlapped with the fire, of a seabed-side view of a boat being rowed to shore. I cannot tell you what they are saying, but I am not sensing any particular hostility.

That's a start, I said. Thanks.

Then I broke out the rest of the fish and set about heating all of them back to piping hot, too. If I was going to host a shore party, I could make it a beach party easy enough. I could barely see the little dot on the horizon that was probably the boat Isobu was talking about, nearly swallowed by the all-encompassing bulk of the parent ship.

…Wait, this was where the term "mothership" had come from, wasn't it? One big capital ship and then a bunch of little ones attached to it?

How is that relevant?

It kind of isn't. I'm just amazed I can use that word in the correct context, and not about aliens.

Isobu gave a silent groan of frustration.

I left him to it and climbed onto a high point on the nearest sand dune, for at least as long as it lasted once I stepped on it. Standing on the tips of my toes, I greeted the rowboat with the widest wave I could manage.

Someone stood up on the bow of the rowboat and waved back.

Two other ships launched, heading around the bay. One is going toward our landing site. The other is traveling the long way around the island.

They're probably scouting for whatever ship could have realistically put me here.

The second ship is much smaller. It likely holds only one human and…it just took off. Isobu paused, sounding irritated all of a sudden. That vessel is traveling ten times the speed of the other two.

I frowned thoughtfully, then retreated to snatch the fish out of the fire before they charred all the way through. Once the food was safe, I leapt into a tree and shot up the rough trunk for a better look. Jumping would have been easier, but I had no intention of revealing my abilities to strangers before I damn well had to.

True to Isobu's word, I could see what looked like an over-engineered raft. Some kind of engine stuck to the back and there was a sail for some obscure reason, and the little monster of a craft cut through the water like it was flying.

Isobu? I thought at him as I slipped back down the tree.

What is it?

I haven't seen a vehicle that fast since the last time I was alive. What the hell kind of tech levels are we working with here?

I would not know. I just recall hearing you complain about radios and a total lack of adequate pens existing at the same time.

Well, crap.

I scratched the back of my neck, wandering back over to the dune and plopping myself down on it. Given the choice between going out to meet the boat or picking at the bizarre binding on my right wrist, I chose the more immediate problem. The pirates could handle their own shit.

I know you are not the type to drink yourself into a stupor and make poor decisions—past even that first one—but I do not recall you getting another seal permanently added to your collection, Isobu commented as I scratched at the kanji and only succeeded at raising red lines on my skin. Those faded fast, but the black marks remained. Even a tribute to me.

It doesn't hurt, but dammit, this makes me feel like that one asshole with a barcode on the back of his head. Sure, kanji wasn't quite that bad, but I'd been branded by some faceless creep and was still trying to decide if I was more afraid or angry about that. Maybe both.

Frustrated, I turned a key in my head and gave Isobu access to the memories I'd accumulated for the past twenty-four hours. The dream was the important part, and thus what I pushed to the forefront. Then I dragged my hand over my face and stared blankly out to sea, watching the pirates slowly approach.

…When we see this creature again, I will kill it. If Isobu had been one of the Tailed Beasts with claws, he'd have pierced stone. As it was, his fingers digging into the seabed crumbled boulders into powder. How dare anyone try to control us?

I slowly shook my head. I don't know what to tell you. I woke up after the dream and it was there, and I don't know what it's supposed to mean. I paused and replayed Isobu's first statement in my mind again. Also, I never really saw it…

Regardless, it will be destroyed, Isobu snarled. After a long moment, he glowered up at the various vessels floating in the water. These humans had better be more helpful to you than that was.

Low bar to clear, Isobu. A very low bar.

I lazed around for a little longer in the morning sun, probably for about another few minutes. But after that point, I hit my personal boredom tolerance limit and decided I had better things to do than court sunburn. Or build sandcastles, though the idea struck me anyway.

No, instead I trekked back over to the town and toward the unmaintained docks that somehow still stood there, awaiting their next visitors. I'd forgotten about them until I noticed the pirates heading to it, so I figured I had enough manners left in me to say hello in person. As long as doing so didn't require me to acquire splinters, anyway.

As the pirate…rowboat finally got within jumping distance of the dock, I took a second to try and assess my possible new friends.

There were three of them thus far, not counting whoever had gone off to circle the island like an overenthusiastic pond skater.

Honestly, even though I knew Jiraiya and other tall people, I had to do a double-take when I finally figured out the relative scale I was working with. Standard deviations of human sizes went out the window, because the big guy in the back was easily twice the size of the guy at the bow of the ship. Vertically, and then maybe another three times horizontally. If not for the pirate regalia, I would have pegged the guy as basically Hagrid.

…Probably evil Hagrid. That grin was kinda unsettling, especially coming from a stranger twice my height. Seemed that he'd been mainlining whatever local Miracle-Gro variant was in the water here, because those sea serpents sure hadn't been eels either.

After that, realizing that the dude in the cowboy hat was about twenty centimeters taller than me, and that the guy with the turban and paired katana was considerably shorter than I was, were really just footnotes.

Maybe that was why I dropped my planned "Ahoy there" for a considerably less enthusiastic, "Yo."

Kakashi would have been so proud of me.

When the first pirate looked totally wrong-footed, I made it worse with, "Welcome to wherever the hell we are. Do you know where this is? Because I sure don't."

Cowboy Hat schooled his features into some kind of order, then said, "We saw your bonfire. Uh, did you need a rescue?"

I looked around at my total lack of boats, boat-building materials, and anything associated with either that hadn't rotted or dried into uselessness. Also at my lack of shoes, hat, or any other real survival gear for an island adventure. Then I looked back at him. "Yep. Thanks for being willing to stop by. I've only been here a day and already I'm sure I don't want to make it two."

"Why are you even on this island? There haven't been any storms in weeks and the Sea Kings kicked all the actual residents off ages ago!" screeched Turban. Because, well, he hadn't introduced himself and he wore a turban.

I wanted one of those swords, though.

I raised a finger, opened my mouth, and then paused. Uh, Isobu, do you happen to have any idea? Because I just remember waking up on the beach.

I remember only that I awoke in the ocean.

Well, dammit. And in the meantime, the pirates sort of leaned forward collectively, as though trying to catch the next detail of a grand story. Which I did not have, because either my memory had been fucked with or there genuinely hadn't been anything between me being in bed in Konoha and then suddenly being transported to this random beach.

I disappointed them by shrugging and saying, "I have no idea."

The Cowboy Hat and Turban looked so crestfallen I almost felt bad for them. Like, I'd last seen that kind of exaggerated despair from Naruto when I told him he had to let other people eat mochi before he claimed the rest of the batch.

I sat back on my heels and accepted a rope passed up from the somewhat-bigger-than-average dinghy, so I could help them secure it. There wasn't much to secure it to, given the state of the dock, but there was such a thing as optimism even in the face of defeat. Maybe I should say something to change the topic…

"So, are you guys pirates?" I tried, hoping to get some information about their crew. Pirates were supposed to be braggarts in the stories, so maybe they'd be happy to gush on that topic?

It quickly became obvious that this was not the right question to ask.

"ZEHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Now, the big guy had been pretty quiet until I said that, and for a second I'd almost forgotten he was there in favor of salvaging my first impression on the other two. But while his crewmates puffed up like angry birds, probably to shout "What are you, stupid?!" in my face, the big guy's weedwacker of a laugh almost made me jump out of my skin.

Does that mean you would rather not—

I know what your solutions tend to be, so please stop there.

Not all of my solutions end in the deaths of hundreds.

Sure, you say that now…

"Say, how long did you say you've been out in the sun?" asked Cowboy Hat. When I focused on him again, as opposed to the voice in my head that also happened to be out at sea, I found a rather concerned expression staring back at me.

"Uh, like a day?" If my memory was right, anyway. I rocked back on my heels until my butt hit the boards, then flexed my legs out so they could dangle over the edge. Now I just need to come up with a plausible lie. "I've kinda been getting by on coconuts…"

Cowboy Hat and Turban exchanged worried looks, they hopped up out of the boat and onto the dock. With the big guy and his awful voice balancing the little boat, they didn't trip or anything. I craned my neck to look up at them, but otherwise didn't move. Instead, I said to Turban, "You're pretty worried over someone you just met."

"Even if you're an idiot, you're still in Whitebeard Pirate territory. We look after our people," said Turban. And he handed me a canteen.

I tried gently pushing it back into his hand, but he insisted. I quirked my lips wryly and said, "Look, I'm fine. I sometimes stop paying attention if I hear something. It's no big deal." With that, I stood up with the canteen still in hand, while Turban looked like he would rather have made me sit back down for my own safety. I dodged the attempt without looking like it, then added, "Actually, since you're here to rescue me, maybe I can pay you with lunch? I have fish, fish, more fish, and coconuts. And questionable booze of several types."

Look, I had some idea of how to be a good host. All the particulars had been chucked out the window, and some of the stuff I was offering wasn't strictly speaking mine, but hey, I tried.

"Well, if you're offering, we'll take it!" said Evilest Hagrid, and I suppressed an inward shudder at hearing that laugh again. But the smile pasted on my face seemed to pass for real well enough. No one commented or grimaced.

Phrasing, you jerk.

Are you certain—

I'm fine.

A quick hop off the docks and a walk across the beach later, and we found my food. Really, it was kind of worrisome how many fish had been caught by Isobu's wave, and I didn't really try to justify to anyone how I could have caught so many with no equipment whatsoever. Luckily, they didn't ask. I would have had to lie, and I wasn't really much good at it.

"So I never did introduce us," says Evilest Hagrid, picking up one of the coconuts and making it look like a grape in his massive hands. He pokes it open with a knife that might as well be a sword. "Marshall D. Teach, of the Whitebeard Pirates."

They had middle names here? I was officially not in Kansas anymore.

Also, Evilest Hagrid suited him better. The name "Teach" rang a bell, but it was a quiet sort of bell that frankly was more of a chime. Still, I made a mental note and decided to check in with Isobu later.

I tilted my head to one side, looking from Teach to the still-unnamed members of the crew. Assuming they were of the same crew, anyway. "So…you two are…?"

"Eastwood," said Cowboy Hat.

No.

"Sinbad," said Turban.

Noooo.

What is it this time?

"I, uh," I said, still not over those names.

Ignoring Isobu, I shook myself, and then found myself defaulting back to old as shit guidelines. As in things I hadn't needed to use in my entire life span, but my forefathers had during the Clan Wars. Sure, I wasn't directly descended from a single shinobi clan, but surely some customs had crossed cultural barriers for the sake of my internal logic if nothing else?

"You can call me Kei," I said, meeting each pirate's eyes in turn. Then I shrugged. "Everyone else does."

"Who else?" asks Teach.

Shoulda figured I'd set myself up for that. So I slumped down and picked up one of the fish, picking listlessly at it. I was an old hand at acting like a sack of concentrated sad anyway. It probably looked like a total emotional shuttering, but I was just drawing on genuine feelings of homesickness and a half-assed acting ability to sell it.

I bit down on the silvery fish, not meeting anyone's eyes.

"H-hey, isn't that poisonous?" Sinbad asked, panicked. "Ah, no, please don't eat that!"

I blinked at him, then swallowed the bite. Well, the inside of my mouth might've tingled a bit yesterday, for about as long as it took me to finish eating, but I was fine. Aside from being hells of hungry.

"You have so much to live for!" wailed Sinbad, while Eastwood just looked like he was gonna cry.

Teach stifled a laugh, but not very well.

"I ate one of these yesterday. I'm fine," I said, nonplussed. Isobu, was this actually poisonous?

Not to me. Probably not to you, either.

Oh. Yay for more passive abilities I hadn't known for sure were a thing.

Just avoid asking friends to sample your cooking.

Shut up.

"But you can't die before the division commander meets you!" Sinbad said, though I was still eating the fish.

"I won't. So, is the rest of this stuff poisonous?" I asked, waving a hand and, though touched by Sinbad's concern, I was not really in the mood to receive it.

Eastwood picked up a fish on a stick—not quite a fish stick but I didn't care for technicalities like that—and pointed at me with it. "None of the rest of these are. Just quit eating the Grand Line lead bullet fish before you make us all sick by proxy."

Too late. I tossed the stick I'd used to cook the fish into the fire as a form of trash disposal, but by that point all that was left was a fish head and a tail fin anyway. I was still hungry, but the rest of the food was for my guests. "Done."

"That is not remotely what I meant," said Eastwood, with just a hint of nervous sweat crawling down the side of his face.

Still, Teach and Sinbad both picked a fish out of the pile, and Teach's was about the size of the sharks I'd rescued yesterday. Sinbad bit a flat-faced fish's head off almost instantly.

"It's fine, though. The rest is for you guys as a thank-you." I stretched my legs out all the way and then crossed my ankles, leaning back in the sand.

"You said something about booze?" asked Eastwood, after the other two were occupied.

"I've only got these, but there are more in town." I held up a beer bottle I'd kept unopened, since the others were being used as improvised water bottles instead. They still tasted like burning, even after I'd made sure to rinse them out with the smallest water ninjutsu I was capable of. "Other than that, all I've got are coconuts."

Eastwood frowned, rubbing at the stubble on his face. "I'm surprised anything in the town's still edible even after all this time. It was abandoned five years ago."

I wobbled a hand in midair. "There definitely wasn't any food. But alcohol keeps pretty well."

Eastwood or Sinbad probably would have replied, or maybe Teach might've started on that motorized laugh of his that was starting to remind me of a dental drill. However, I heard the sound of a craft rocketing through the water, and then everyone paused to listen as it got louder. It wasn't obvious at first, necessarily, but then it finally engulfed the wave-made backing track of my life.

And then the aforementioned little watercraft shot up the back of a wave like a ramp, sending it flying right into the shallowest possible end of the surf. The craft's nose barely avoided embedding in the sand like a dart.

The craft's rider was not so lucky, face-planting squarely in the first patch of dry sand in his wake and sending his orange hat flying. Eastwood and Sinbad both winced, but Teach just started chuckling again.

I shot to my feet, bounding over the piles of driftwood and reaching the downed man in maybe two quick leaps. A part of me belatedly blared a warning—that I shouldn't reveal any of my skills to people I wasn't sure I could trust—but the rest of my mind jammed in medic mode and didn't let that first part steer. Sure, I hadn't been officially certified for medical ninjutsu usage without assistance in over a decade—and had never technically been a medic-nin before that, either—but I could do first aid.

I got as far as rolling him over onto his back before I realized he was snoring. The guy didn't even look like the impact had made him flinch, much less mussed his black hair or left a mark. No, instead his snoring continued unabated.

He was a younger man than any of the pirates I'd seen so far, and in pretty decent shape, so I cautiously narrowed my list of possible instant-onset unconsciousness conditions by ruling out heart attack and stroke. It wasn't like I had medical equipment to do a full battery of tests, or a brain full of diagnostic criteria.

Cautiously, I tried prying an eyelid up and watched the pupil still respond to light.

"Don't worry so much! The commander's always doing things like this!" Teach said, around his laughter.

"Teach is right! He'll be up again in a few minutes," added Sinbad, who by that point had cut the top off a coconut to make a very low-effort rip-off of one of those weird tiki drinks. I…probably would have been exactly that lazy when it came to using my swords as utensils, at least when I had one.

I frowned. I couldn't sense the commander's chakra at all, which ordinarily would mean he was dead. But he was still breathing. And aside from Isobu, there still weren't any chakra signatures in range at all. Despite the obvious abundance of life-forms running loose around here, apparently the Ten-Tails had never landed in this (part of the) world.

It made my diagnostic jutsu, which relied on reading chakra flow, pretty useless.

"Did he seriously just fall asleep?" I asked, even as I gently took hold of his tattooed bicep and shook it. All it did was change the tempo of his snoring.

"It happens," Eastwood said dismissively, removing his cowboy hat for a second to run a hand through his light brown hair. "So, you a doctor something?"

"Actually, I failed my exam," I said, picking the still-unnamed commander's hat out of the dirt and brushing it off. After a moment's consideration, I dropped it over his face. "Smarter people banned me from practicing medicine for the sake of my patients."

At least I was knowledgeable enough to know my limits.

If this was, say, narcolepsy, I really wasn't trained well enough to help. Rin would have snapped her fingers and recalled some kind of solution to any problem ever listed in a Konoha medical textbook, but I maintained my streak of ending up in over my head. I, instead, was just about qualified to be an EMT. In the middle of a minefield.

Really, though "demolitions expert" and "doctor" both started with the same consonant, my skills leaned heavily in the first direction. Not like I'd actually mention that to these people unless I had a reason to.

"You can't be that bad, can you?" Sinbad asked blankly, his large eyes rather wider than before.

Eastwood made a face. "Maybe we should mention that to Pops…"

I was about to ask them if they were second-generation pirates carting a retiree out to sea while going around plundering, but at that point the commander woke up. Specifically, he sat up like he'd been shocked and had one arm raised in a half-wave.

"Hey every—wait." He looked at me, since I was crouched next to him. Then he picked up his hat, which had dropped into his lap, and stuck it back onto his head in its proper place. "Weren't you on the beach?"

"And now so are you," I said. I raised a hand in greeting. "Yo."

For a second, the guy was so totally guileless that I wondered if he'd managed to concuss himself on landing. Either that or, between the freckles and the total lack of lines on his face, he was really young. As in, I wouldn't have followed his directions if he was my commanding officer out of sheer paranoia that he'd fuck up due to inexperience.

Kinda funny coming from me, really. I'd been in some sort of command position since I was like eleven.

A lightbulb switched on inside his brain. Or so I hoped. "Oh, right, you. Who are you again?"

I fought down the eye tic I just knew I was developing. "The name's Kei. I've been stuck on this island for two days. And you are…?"

The guy sat up fully, then pulled off what my old elementary school teachers would have called "crisscross applesauce." He rested his right hand on his crossed ankles, and tipped his hat with his left. "Portgas D. Ace, Second Division Commander of the Whitebeard Pirates." He dropped his hat back on his head and leaned back, spotting his fellow pirates, and added with a sweep of his arm, "And these guys are my men."

"I met them while you were taking a dirt nap," I said, getting to my feet. I offered him a hand up. "So, gonna join us for lunch?"

"Sure!" Ace replied, and I got to watch his crewmates making frantic "no" motions over his shoulder. They stopped when he turned around and immediately started marching toward food.

I trailed uncertainly after, especially once I realized that Ace was reminding me of someone.

By the time I made it back to the fire, Ace had eaten about half the fish in no seconds flat. And then I realized that he reminded me of about half of my friends after long physical training sessions. Together. We were hell on restaurants.

"Where does it all go?" I wondered aloud, as every remaining scrap of my food-finding mission disappeared in short order. Ace wasn't big enough to eat like that, right?

"I've asked the universe that every day since I first met him," Eastwood replied.

"Ever get an answer?" Sinbad asked mildly, protecting his coconut from Ace's grasping hands.

Eastwood tilted his hat so it covered his face. And then he let out a pained, "I wish."

While Ace continued to devour anything foodlike that couldn't talk, Teach got to his feet. I had to admit that I was side-eyeing him, because I still wasn't used to being in the presence of a human that damned big, but all he did was push off with a wave and a "I'm going to scout the rest of this island."

Ace made a noise that might have been along the lines of "sure," but Teach was already leaving.

Well, he was about the size of an elephant. Must have eaten his greens and drunk a lot of milk as a kid. He'd probably be fine as long as he didn't find the few sea serpents that Isobu hadn't walloped.

"Wasn't the best I've ever had," Ace concluded, a fishbone hanging from his mouth as he talked, "but it was all right. Bit overcooked."

"Given that I was just using fire and brute force, I'll take that as a compliment," I said, resting my face on the palm of my hand.

Ace snapped his fingers, and a tiny puff of flame shot out above his knuckles. He didn't seem to notice or care, while his crew didn't look bothered either. "Oh, right, I remember now! Pops wants to know if you wanted to head out with us?"

I blinked, trying to figure out how he'd done that with no chakra whatsoever. Then I registered what he said, and came up with, "Well, I don't want to spend more time on this island. Any help avoiding that would be great."

Luckily, I'd never intended to come across as a particularly well-spoken person.

"Well, that is what Pops asked. You're gonna have to talk to him about your plans, though," Ace said, which was probably not the most reassuring thing he could have said.

I had no idea what their damned captain was even like. Still, I shoved down any sense of unease with the knowledge that Isobu had my back regardless of what happened next.

"Then I'd better go say hello," I said, forcing a somewhat lopsided smile.

"Right. So, Eastwood, Sinbad, can you make sure Teach gets off the island alive? Or that he finds water or something." Ace clearly didn't need to look after his men like a mother hen, at least. As he got to his feet, he added, "I'll take Kei back to the Moby Dick right now."

"On that?" I asked, jabbing a thumb at the raft he'd cannoned in on. It was upside down and if the universe had any sense of humor it would have been on fire to complete the look.

"Striker's fine," Ace insisted, while his men moved off to locate their giant comrade. But he betrayed some sense of nervousness by how he darted over to the craft. "The engine works, it has to work—"

I helped Ace flip his boat over again, though besides the engine it was a pretty light craft. It looked like a raft and a speedboat had a baby with some impressive hybrid vigor, and yet still hadn't gotten rid of the vestigial sail. While I stood back a bit, Ace checked the thing over for damage like a guy trying to make sure his car had gotten out of a fender bender intact. Something like that, anyway.

Once the inspection ritual was over, we got to work. Since I had the bow—if a tiny craft like this could even have such a thing—I guided it out into the bay, the water lapping up to my knees as I went. Ace was already on the lone seat by the time I got that far.

Walking on water would not have helped my cover.

Ace looked down at me as though assessing me for something. I must have met general approval, because he said, "Grab onto the back."

"And not the front?" I asked, since there was just empty space by Ace's feet. I could sit pretty low in the water and not unbalance the boat no matter how fast it went.

Ace shrugged, leaning back in his seat with his hands laced behind his head. "Hey, they're your feet."

…What.

Do you need some kind of encouragement? This is taking far too long.

Come to think of it, the bottom of the boat looked a little…scorched.

I climbed up onto the craft and hooked my arms around the mast, trying to stay as low as possible even if I had to turn myself into a yoga-based knot. If we crashed, I'd probably faceplant into the mast and crack it while my elbows brained Ace, but if he thought that was an acceptable price, whatever.

"Ready?" Ace asked, glancing back at me.

"I would hate to see what this would look like if I wasn't," I said dryly, since I had my arms and legs wrapped around the mast. I probably looked like a koala.

Ace grinned, and then his feet caught fire.

I suppressed a squeak of surprise, overriding it with sheer fascination after a second to get over the shock. From the ankles down, his feet actually disappeared, like he was turning into fire. Fire Clones didn't last all that long, but as I watched as the fire was diverted continually from his body and into the engine's intake. And he didn't lose mass! It went against every rule of chakra usage I'd ever learned, including not apparently using any for an exciting effect.

A split second later, the raft shot toward the big whale ship as though my added weight meant nothing at all.

Definitely not in Kansas anymore.

…Maybe I should have ridden like a killed deer. Or sidesaddle. Or made Ace stand up so I could sit in front of the damned mast. My arms had not liked that jolt or any of the ones after that, as the raft bounced all over the damned place.

You say that like the situation could not be much worse.

Don't give me ideas. Or worse, give the universe ideas.

"Hanging in there?" Ace called back over his shoulder.

"You are so lucky I don't get seasick," I grumbled back. Sure, I'd never spent a lot of time at sea, but ninja shenanigans involved so many acrobatics that people with sensitive inner ears didn't do all that well. If I didn't throw up after ricocheting off thirteen non-horizontal surfaces in a row and then having a flip-heavy swordfight, mere waves were nothing.

Ace barked out a laugh. "You'll be fine; we're almost there!"

I tried to glare a hole through his back. The big Whitebeard insignia tattooed across his back made a pretty good focusing aid to that end.

"So, anything I need to know about your captain before I meet him?" I asked, as the engine started to slow and I finally understood how huge the white whale boat really was.

Ace said nothing, but I got the impression that he was grinning in anticipation of that question coming back to bite me in the ass. Call it a hunch, based on the way his shoulders were shaking.

Apparently, I was mastering the art of asking questions pretty much everyone already knew the answer to.

Perhaps you should add that to your list of epithets. Tidal Blade, the Fourth Hokage's student, jōnin-sensei, and now "asker of impertinent questions."

You are doing the opposite of helping.

"You still there?" Ace asked, since I'd gone quiet.

"Yeah." I shifted my grip on the mast as we finally pulled up next to the ship. Using just a tiny bit of chakra to secure my grip, I swung around to the front of the mast the second that Ace abandoned his seat, giving me a place to put my feet without exposing my abilities. "Maybe I've been out in the sun too long."

"Check in with the doctors once the meeting's over, then." Ace took one step toward the curved bow of his little raft-boat-thing and bellowed, "Someone throw me a line for Striker!"

Obligingly, someone threw heavy rope over the railing. Ace caught the line and immediately started binding Striker's bow to the much larger ship. I leaned back against the mast and planned my ascent up the side of the ship.

"Do you need a ladder?" Ace asked, belatedly realizing that I might actually have a problem with being asked to climb up sheer wood with only a bit of help from two rows of cannon-ports. Which were a good twenty-five meters above the water line.

I shrugged, finally letting go of the mast. I was gonna get my sea legs somehow, dammit. "Give me a boost and I'll handle the rest."

Ace lifted the brim of his hat, measuring the distance from our position at sea level and the Moby Dick's deck. It was probably a good fifty or fifty-five meters, which sounded fucking ridiculous on its face, but Ace didn't seem to find anything wrong with my assessment.

I probably needed to drastically revise my idea of what "normal" was here, and act on that instead. So I took the first step of that plan.

Ace held both his hands out, knitting his fingers together. "Okay, Kei. When you're ready."

I quirked my lips to one side, even as I prepared to jump. "Was that a pun?"

"Hey, you're the one whose name's a letter," Ace replied.

Tch. Wasn't like anyone had noticed before.

Without a further word, I leapt with my right foot forward, and maybe I put a bit of chakra into it for the sake of showing off how high I could go in a single bound. Superhero shit, for nostalgia's sake. I could have landed neatly on the railing just under my own power.

I just didn't expect Ace to be able to provide enough force for me to easily land on the deck on his own.

Thus, instead of landing where I planned, I kept going up until I stuck myself to the big spar running across the top of the top sail of the middle mast. I swung around it as close to the bar as I could manage, to avoid hitting the sail itself, and ended up sitting on top of the thing like it was a gymnastics balance beam.

"Well, now I guess I know if I can make it to the top of the Hokage Mountain in two leaps," I said to myself, looking down past the furled sails and toward the deck. Hopefully, no one had heard my shriek before it morphed into a whoop of joy.

I did.

You hear everything and therefore don't count.

"Ace, what the hell?!" demanded a somewhat indistinct shape that must have been the guy who threw Ace the mooring rope.

"I don't know!" Ace yelled back, even as he zoomed up to the deck with his legs transformed into a single pillar of flame. At least, he seemed to glow orange a bit. "Kei, are you all right?"

I waved down at them, and at the crowd suddenly milling around on the deck. Apparently, we'd caused a bit of a commotion.

Interesting first impression.

Shhhh.

"Do you need any help?" Ace called up to me, though the wind was doing its level best to snatch the sound away.

"Probably!" I shouted back down.

While the sheer height on the jump was a surprise to me, the sensation was short-lived once I'd realized I needed to start the gymnastics routine. The pirates, on the other hand, seemed to be having a lot more fun gawking, making fun of others for gawking, and laughing at Ace. Made the whole thing just take longer, really.

The Moby Dick, I realized belatedly, was a fair bit larger than it looked at first glance. On top of being somewhat snub-nosed but over two hundred meters long despite that, the deck was almost half that length wide. While the polished wood was obscured by the number of people on board, I had to imagine that the ship was well-maintained despite its size. If I looked over the back side of the mast I was sitting on, I could see what looked like a massive chair made of some kind of yellow material, but my sense of scale was a bit screwy. There was no way any single person could use that thing, right?

Then I remembered how big Teach was and told my skepticism to take a back seat already.

After a few moments of watching the people milling below like comically-inclined ants, I swung around on the spar to head toward the crow's nest. A redheaded man with a pretty ridiculous-looking pompadour sat in the little basket of a structure, and he'd been working on stifling his guffaws for at least a minute before I moved.

I meandered over to him with my arms out to the side mostly for show, treating the mast's swaying like a balancing act. Or a training exercise. With Gai taking the lead on every major shift in training my social circle seemed to commit to, everything ended up being a training exercise sooner or later.

I leaned over the edge of the little railing, chin resting on one hand. I extended the other in a wave. "Yo."

"'Yo' yourself," the guy said, and finally looked up. He appeared to be five to ten years older than I was, with a scar on the side of his face and a goatee-style beard that was such a different shade from the rest of his hair that I assumed one or the other had to be dyed. "I'm not sure if you can see their faces from up here, but—" He started laughing again, since laughter was literally contagious around here or something.

"I have a pretty good imagination," I said mildly, while he doubled over wheezing as he tried to catch his breath. "So, can I climb down now?"

"Sure, sure—wait, don't you want a lift?" the man asked, snapping back from cackling to concern in a flash. "I can make the jump just fine."

Good to know. I could officially add "invulnerable to fall damage" to the list of things people around here were expected to be. I just didn't want to try it with bare feet.

"Ah, I think I should just try things the old-fashioned way, given how the last offer went," I smiled somewhat sheepishly, already clambering around him and to the rigging.

"Pff, Ace just doesn't know his own strength. And now he can't rescue you since he'd set the sails on fire," he said, still amused. When I was halfway down the first sail, he added cheerfully, "I'm Thatch, by the way!"

"Nice to meet you!" I called back, before focusing on my descent. Something about his name stuck out, for some reason, but I filed it away for later.

It took me about a minute to get to the lowest mast, at which point I just decided to drop to the deck. I landed in a perfect shinobi crouch, almost like I hadn't felt the impact at all. Hooray for chakra, superpowers, and really forgiving physics.

Most of the pirates around me burst into applause, making me blink at them in surprise. It wasn't like they couldn't have done the same, if Thatch was any indication.

"Nice recovery!"

"Was it fun?"

"Way to stick the landing!"

"Uh, thanks?" I managed, and got a hearty clap on the back from Eastwood, who must have managed to row all the way back to the Moby Dick pretty quickly for a guy whose counterweight outweighed him four times over. Unless they'd made Teach row, too.

I'd never known what to do with being the center of attention in a non-hostile sense. Hostility was easy—killing everyone was simple. But I did not do large crowds.

And then Ace delivered a flying kick to one of his crewmates—apparently selected at random—with a shout of, "Everyone get back to work already!"

The crowd dispersed with some grumbling and a few not-so-covert cases of money changing hands, and I glanced around with absolutely no idea what the hell had happened. Pirates were weird.

"Sorry about that," Ace said, once I decided to focus on him again. He bowed his head in a formal-ish apology that I personally hadn't seen used since the last time Hayate had blown up something he wasn't supposed to.

"It's fine. I've climbed bigger trees back home," I said, not really sure which part he was apologizing for and hazarding a guess. "Uh, also, your crew's pretty nice."

Seriously. I'd gotten a much colder shoulder from everyone I'd ever met back home, except for Obito, Rin, and my family. Maybe Konoha's society was just a stuffier place than a pirate crew could ever be. Homesickness ached like the blazes, but I didn't miss that particular problem.

"Only some of them are mine," Ace corrected me. As if I'd be able to tell who was in the Second Division just by sight. "But they're all my brothers and sisters."

My eyebrows rose. Not so dissimilar from Konoha's team structures, then. Just…bigger. While the Moby Dick was probably the size of a cruise liner or something, I had no idea how many people could be on the ship without any chakra for me to sense. Not guesstimating the number of crew members from observing the crowd suddenly seemed like a rather important mistake.

"Then where is 'Pops'?" I asked, shoving my unease out of the way.

"This way," Ace said, and set off immediately toward…one of the cabins. Past the giant lounge chair.

There were probably a lot of those. Not for the first time, I wished I knew more about ships than just the names of some of the parts, the fact that they floated, and that potato-peeling was probably a chore on them. All of my practical knowledge was geared toward land-based combat and the million ways there were to make it easier on me.

Well, this particular cabin door linked up with the deck directly. Maybe it was the captain's cabin?

…Why was it about six meters tall? Actually, everything on this ship was over…sized…

Aw, hell.

I somehow get the feeling this is going to be one of those situations where if I let my surprise show on my face, I'm going to get laughed at.

Better than being attacked, Isobu rumbled. His chakra marked his position almost directly below the Moby Dick, poised for the perfect strike on the ship if negotiations—if that's what these were—went badly. For the attackers.

"Pops, we picked up the stray!" Ace called out, rather than knocking or really bothering with any kind of formality. Probably said something about…everything regarding this crew, really.

I stood up on the balls of my feet to get a look over Ace's shoulder, but needn't have bothered. The guy stepped aside as soon as he got a response.

The response in question was in a booming voice that rolled like an earthquake. The actual thing he said, after that, was, "Come in and let me take a look at you."

My first thought upon seeing the captain, after all the hype built up for the last hour or so, was…mixed.

On one hand, he was huge. Like, at least two meters taller than Teach, built almost identically to Jiraiya but with a serious infusion of giant genetics. The guy was probably twenty or more years older than my sorta-grandfather, going by the deep-set crow's feet around his face and the wiry cast to his huge hands. Sitting back in a giant reclining chair, he looked like nothing less than the bewhiskered king of this show.

On the other, he was surrounded by women in pink nurse's uniforms, and hooked up with half a dozen machines and IV lines. He had a catheter running from a ventilator to his nose, and his skin looked clammy and worn-out even when I factored in his age.

All of these assessments crossed my mind in about three seconds, and the thing that followed them was, "So, Ace, I think I owe Teach an apology."

"What?" Ace asked in genuine puzzlement.

"I'll tell you later." I stepped forward, met the captain's eyes for just a split second, and bowed with my hands clasped modestly in front of me. I kept my head down as I said, "Thank you for saving me, Captain Whitebeard."

We could have easily traveled to the next island without his assistance, Isobu butted in, just to be perfectly clear.

Shh.

"There's no need to be that stiff. It was nothing." When I glanced up, the captain waved one hand that had to be big enough to pick up a wine barrel single-handedly. In fact, the mug by his elbow was a barrel. Still, I recognized the dismissive gesture for what it was. "Rescuing a lost sailor is reward enough for any son of the sea."

"Then I'm glad your code extends to me," I replied, ending my bow. Well, if this guy went by "Pops" with his entire crew, maybe he wasn't much for formality in general. So, I stuck my hands in my pockets and asked, "What happens now?"

"First thing's first," said one of the nurses—a woman with a severe-looking expression who was probably around forty years old. She looked me up and down, and if anything her face pinched more. "You're getting a checkup and then new clothes."

I mentally ran through the varied outfits I'd seen since getting onto the ship, making the occasional adjustment for how badly I'd underestimated the variety of shapes and sizes of the Whitebeard Pirates' members, then said, "I didn't think pirates had uniforms."

I mean, my pajama pants had originally been a part of my uniform, but their days were long past. The T-shirt had been a happy accident of a gift from Aunt Inari, who misread a size or two and gave me something I could practically disappear in. The combined effect did sell the "marooned islander" look I'd ended up with. I had to wonder what would have happened if I'd been in full Konoha uniform and not looking like a castaway.

"Only the nurses have uniforms, but at the very least you need shoes," said the nurse. She patted my shoulder, but with her expression the effect was somewhat incongruous. "We'll handle everything in time for lunch."

As I was whisked off to the medical bay, I had enough time to think, What have I gotten myself into now?

Isobu's answer was a snort of laughter, and I mentally flipped him off before surrendering to the inevitable.

AN: So since none of the Spades Pirates besides Ace were ever named, I slapped two names to two faces.

I have seven completed chapters for this bizarro side-adventure, and it's been eating my brain since about...mid-January. I'll probably post once a week until either I run out of buffer or out of story, with each chapter sitting at about ten thousand words a pop. Many thanks to everyone who decided to encourage this crossover, because without your enthusiasm I probably would never have tried my hand at this!

(The timeline's kinda vague for now, but I'm sure all those loyal One Piece fans in the audience have it worked out by now. Probably better than I do.)