A/N: Please enjoy!

Thatch had managed to pull through.

It had been touch and go for quite a while, but his condition had levelled out and he wasn't critical any longer. Of course, that could change quite quickly but for now, he was safe and in the clear.

"That was far too close, but he should be okay in the long run. Now all he needs is rest." The doctor thought for a moment, "And quiet."

The doctor then removed himself from the room, probably to go and check on their father, leaving Marco, Izo and Jozu. The other division commanders were helping to keep the ship running in the absence of Ace and Thatch.

"Why?"

Jozu was not normally quiet, but he didn't want to wake their brother from his much needed rest. (That and the doctor's orders. It wasn't safe to ignore a doctor's order, especially a Pirate doctor's orders.)

"He wanted the devil fruit, so he took it."

Marco replied, flatly.

"But that specific devil fruit? What do we actually know about it?"

Izo looked as if he were to tear his hair out in frustration.

"Not much, only that it's considered to be an evil devil fruit."

"Evil? How so?"

"Something about being able to nullify others?"

Marco only realised what he had said until he had said it.

"No."

They had sent Ace after Teach. Alone.

"Damn it!"

Even if he were to get into contact with his friend, there was no guarantee that she would have any information that would help in aid of capturing or defeating the traitor who now held the powers of the Yami Yami no Mi.

"We have to send someone after him!" Izo and Jozu had clearly caught onto his train of thought.

"We'll send someone after him as soon as he gets into contact with us. It shouldn't be too far away." But that still didn't comfort anyone in the room, and it most certainly wouldn't comfort their father, Edward Newgate.

"Teach was always strange, you know?" Jozu spoke. "He just kind of appeared out of nowhere and asked to join the crew."

"That's normally what a lot of people do, Jozu, that's nothing unusual."

Izo replied.

"Yes, but not everyone can immediately wound a former member of the Roger Pirates."

Jozu had made a good point, Shanks even as a cabin boy wasn't exactly a pushover and by the point Marshall D. Teach had joined up with the Whitebeard Pirates, the Roger Pirate's had been disbanded for two or so years. He hadn't been a cabin brat at that stage and had begun to gather his own crew of formidable fighters. So how had a rookie, no name come out of nowhere and injured the heir to the empty throne at the time?

"Fuck, how? Why did that not register?" Marco stood up, almost shouting.

"Because he kept to himself for ages after he'd had joined, and was always so quiet. Even in fights, he would stay towards the back."

A quiet cough interrupted their musings, as Thatch slowly sat up.

"Hey brothers! What have I missed?"

"Thatch!"

We had been sailing off course from Alabasta for almost an entire day now, and it was getting progressively colder and colder the closer we drifted towards Drum Island and towards a doctor that would be able to save Nami's life. Vivi and Carue were spending the majority of her time with Nami, with myself popping in and out to make sure that Nami's health didn't get any worse than what it had already been. The Princess had been swapping between worrying over Nami and worrying over the now half crumpled newspaper; her people were in a lot of trouble, but the life of one of her crewmates was in serious danger. Sanji had been flitting about between the kitchen, checking on Nami and making sure that she was doing okay. He was acting as if he were a very attentive and possessive male hummingbird.

Usopp was actually navigating the ship whilst Nami was technically out of commission, with Luffy and Zoro were on lookout. So far the arrangement had worked out well, but there was an ominous feeling about the ship that something was going to happen, and I definitely wasn't thinking about Wapol and his unfortunate capabilities of eating ships and crewmates.

We were all worried about Nami.

"Is there anything you can do at all to help her?"

The Captain was incredibly anxious about the navigators health, which wasn't a huge surprise considering he had never been sick.

"Unfortunately not, Captain. We've already done everything that we can at the moment."

He frowned at my answer, "The only thing we can really do at the moment is keep her comfortable and try and keep her temperature down."

The Captain just stared at me for a moment, as though piercing my soul. It made me a little uncomfortable, having never been subjected to his weighty gaze. It felt like a judging. He suddenly smiled, "She's going to be fine! You and Vivi have been taking really good care of her until we can reach a doctor!"

I could feel my cheeks heating up, "Thanks Captain."

He gave his signature laugh and bounded off, presumably to annoy Usopp.

"Not bad." Zoro spoke up from beside me, his green hair covered in snow, making him look almost like a Northern Christmas Tree. He shoved a pointed finger into my face, "Still don't entirely trust you."

"That's fair. I don't expect you to."

I must have made progress then; he trusted me, if only a little, but that was better than nothing.

He looked through the binoculars once again, and let out a strange noise.

"Do you think that a person could stand on top of an ocean?" He lowered the binoculars, giving those up on deck a questioning stare.

"Depends, if it was frozen possibly. I wouldn't trust someone who could stand on water, though. Not out here on the Grand Line." Then I muttered, not realising that Zoro could hear me, "This isn't Naruto, though. People can't do that!"

"Wouldn't trust them?" Zoro pointed towards the oddly clothed man, checkered and an almost abstract painted mouth, standing on top of a seemingly frozen patch of the ocean.

I shook my head.

My memories weren't perfect, especially of the events before Drum Island as it had been many years, even before arriving in this world, since I had read or watched the arc, but I knew that something not-so-great was going to happen.

Usopp and Luffy had made there way down to stand close to Zoro and myself by this point, both with confused looks on their faces.

The man on the ocean suddenly spoke.

"It's quite cold today, isn't it?"

I grabbed a hold of Zoro's wrist in warning. He looked towards me and I pointed out the water below the man. It was still rippling and you could vaguely make out wooden boards underneath him. Luffy had also noticed my actions, and tensed himself up, readying for a fight; Usopp wasn't entirely obvious to our movements, taking a few steps back, away from the ledge.

"It is." "It's freezing."

The strangers head tilted to the side, his mouth twitching up in an almost satisfied smirk. "Is that so."

There was silence for a moment, the four of us taking a few more steps back, trying to be as subtle as possible and not really succeeding as the stranger's smirk became stronger. A sudden break of the water underneath the smirking man had us all flying backwards, as an incredibly large ship made it's way through the water; the ocean was sent rushing towards the Going Merry, splashing onto the deck.

"What's that?" Luffy had to grab onto both the ship and his hat to make sure that he nor his hat went flying. "A watermelon?"

"Don't think so, Captain!" I replied from where I was lying underneath the main mast. Where did Luffy get that from? How did that resemble a watermelon in any way, shape or form?

"Is that thing a ship?" Zoro's face was a shocked as I had ever seen it, eyes wide.

A loud cackling laughter could be heard, coming from the large ship that now floated in front of us.

"ARE YOU SURPRISED? HAS MY SUBMERSIBLE AMBUSH-SHIP, THE TIN CAN KING, LEFT YOU SPEECHLESS?" The voice was obnoxious, condescending.

"Crap! A pirate ship!" Usopp's face screwed up in fear and irritation, something that I hadn't thought possible to combine the two emotions.

Luffy was amazed at the sheer size of the ship in front of us.

"Why now of all times?" Zoro frowned.

"Murphy's Law." I dryly stated back.

"Who is Murphy and why do we have to follow his laws?" Luffy asked, still in awe at the ambush ship.

"It means that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong Captain."

"Oh, okay!"

There was the sound of running footsteps, from both below and above us. We were being boarded.

"What's going on up here?" Sanji had appeared, taking a cigarette out of his pocket and lighting it, taking in the amount of enemy pirates that had surrounded us on all sides.

"We were ambushed." Luffy replied back, staring almost calmly back at his cook.

Sanji returned the stare, just as dryly back at his Captain, "I gathered that."

Luffy turned back towards the large man walking in his direction. "We're in a hurry, you know."

I was suddenly pushed forward, a gun pointed towards my temple making its presence known. Sanji didn't like this one bit, having noticed it first.

"Don't you dare threaten her!"

The man in front of Luffy paid us no mind, calmly counting out loud the amount of people on board the Going Merry.

"Five people? A ship this size, there has to be more people." He heaved a sigh, shoving a half eaten sword into his mouth and taking a large bite, cleanly snapping it in two. "No matter, let me ask you something..."

The Captain wasn't listening, having seen the clean bite. "He just ate that whole sword!"

"That hurts just looking at it!" Usopp looked disgusted and Zoro wasn't far behind him, his respect for the sword running deep within his blood.

Sanji, on the other hand, was fussing over my current predicament, muttering threats under his breath whilst simultaneously shooting me comforting looks.

I had to admit that having a gun almost pressed to my temple wasn't exactly giving me 'the time of my life' vibes, but I could quite honestly say that it wasn't the first time that something like this had happened. Fights and brawls were common at the bar back in Loguetown, and females are (seemingly) a lot easier to threaten than males. Something that the rogues and criminals of Loguetown had found didn't quite work out well on me, not any of the other women from the bar.

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't callously point that gun in my face, thank you."

"Sorry, sweetheart, but we can't have that." The stupid smug grin on the mans face did little to dissuade Sanji from wanting to stamp on it, if the look on his face was anything to go by.

"We wish to head to Drum Kingdom, do you happen to have a log pose, or even an eternal log pose aboard this ship?"

"No, and we've never even heard of Drum Island."

Well, the others hadn't, but I certainly had.

"If you're done asking, we need to hurry up." Luffy crossed his arms and glared, almost pouting at the intruder. "Go away."

The man laughed again, "Theres no need to rush through life like that. Well if you don't have it, then I'll take whatever treasures you have onboard instead."

"What!" The Captain wasn't happy, not at all.

"I'm feeling peckish first." The man promptly took a large bite out of the side of the ship.

That had to have hurt. The poor Going Merry was certainly taking a beating at the moment, no wonder the little sheep didn't make it further in the Grand Line than what she had. But she was strong, the heavy weight of her crews dreams onboard pushing her further and further than a caravel would. As soon as I had those thoughts, I heard a childlike giggle.

Outlier! Crown Queen Ebony! Our Chronicler!

I jumped, not expecting the young voice that nobody else seemed to be able to hear.

The klabautermann had awakened already, sooner than I had ever expected.

I know the things that all my crew knows, don't worry Ebony, everything will be fine!

And now I was being comforted by our ship, who knew she was going to die. I wanted to cry, but I couldn't because then the crew would wonder what was wrong and I had to stay strong, especially in the moment.

"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THIS PERSON?" "WHAT?"

Continuing to snack on the Going Merry, he completely ignored the Captain shouting at him to stop eating the ship, having chowed down on the anchor and the rope attached to it.

"DON'T EAT OUR SHIP!" The Captain was now furious with indignation, as one of the intruders lackeys shouted at him.

"Don't you dare move! His Highness is in the middle of a meal!"

"Well His Highness needs to learn proper guest etiquette!" I shouted towards the man; this promptly caused three things to happen. One, the gun pointed towards my temple was a pressed right against my forehead, leaving me to feel the cold still against my skin. Two, Luffy to punch the speaker in the head and thirdly for me to swing my arm up and grip a hold of the gun, ripping it out of the mans grip and throwing it overboard.

"THEY'RE RESISTING! FIRE! FIRE!"

"Finally!" Sanji's grin was boyish and jovial.

"We should have done this sooner!" Zoro's however, was bestial and with a hint of bloodlust.

"Well, we were technically waiting for the Captain's orders." I also couldn't help but grin; I wasn't a fighter by nature, more of a pacifist than anything, but the thrill of a spar was pretty fun.

"Can't we just talk about this?" Usopp wailed, having not moved from his spot, where he was half laying on the deck and half against the mast.

The resulting chaos left the intruders, bar their captain, lying in heaps on the decks of the Going Merry and our Captain's head being eaten by the royal idiot Wapol.

"A tough one to chew, aren't you?"

"GET OFF OF MY SHIP!"

Luffy had flung his arms out as far as they would go and held taut before letting them loose. Wapol was sent flying off of the ship and up into the air, Team Rocket style complete with air sparkles.

"You should be resting!"

Izo had to gently push his brother back down onto his bed, "Don't get up just yet, give yourself some time!"

Jozu had run off to tell Pops the news that his son had survived and was now awake. Izo was fussing around him, with Marco sitting down, staring at his hands, deep in thought.

"I'm alive, aren't I?" Thatch had allowed Izo to push him down, but he arranged himself with some difficulty to lay so that he was facing his brothers rather than the ceiling of the infirmary.

"You almost weren't." Their eldest brother never cried, but you could tell that he wanted to. Marco took a shuddering breath in and out, "If Ace hadn't remembered his friends warning, you wouldn't be alive right now. We would have been too late."

Thatch thought about it, Teach had looked at the fruit with undisguised awe and hunger and looked upon Thatch in jealousy. Everyone knew that on the Moby Dick, if you found a devil fruit then you were the only one allowed to eat it (unless you gave it away). If Teach had eaten it, without almost fatally wounding Thatch, he would have been punished; but he had almost killed him for the damn fruit, Marshall D. Teach had signed his own death warrant with that.

"Where is Ace? I would have thought he'd be by my deathbed." Thatch laughed then winced, his usual humour wouldn't be appreciated at this point in time. "Sorry."

Marco waved him off, whilst Izo answered.

"Ace has gone after him."

Thatch could feel his chest tighten and his fists clench. Ace was their youngest brother, despite being one of the strongest amongst them. He knew that Ace may have a chance against the traitor, but as it were now, presuming that Teach had eaten the damn fruit, whatever advantage Ace had had was now lost.

"Alone?"

"Unfortunately, we're going to send someone else after him when he gets in contact with his friend and sets up a meeting."

"His friend, huh?" Thatch and the others had been regaled with tales and stories about Ace's younger brother, Luffy and the occasional tale of Sabo (when he was sufficiently plastered, at least, no one mentioned it to him afterwards incase his temper got the better of him). As well as stories about a friend that he had met in Loguetown, who he seemed to have a gaping soft spot for but wouldn't ever mention. There were a lot more mentions of the friend than what Ace thought; never as many as Luffy, though. (The man had a brother complex and it was apparently justified; Monkey D. Luffy was a walking trouble magnet who could find himself in the strangest of circumstances.)

"The same friend that he talks about with glowing ears?"

Marco and Izo grinned, glad that they weren't the only ones who noticed that about the flame user.

"The very same." "Yes."

"Good," Thatch grinned at his brothers. "Very good."

The sun had gone down, and without Nami's expert navigation it would have been impossible for us to continue on through the night. Thankfully we had multiple anchors, so dropping one of the spares after Wapol had eaten the original wasn't so much of an issue.

We'd agreed that in spite of the sudden ambush, that it would be best, at least for that time, to have two people on look out. Sanji was rostered on originally anyway, so that only left one of us.

"I'll do it." I raised my hand, in between eating the food that Sanji had made, "I can also keep on eye on Nami, too if that helps?"

"I can do that, Ebony-san." Vivi spoke up.

"Are you sure? If you want to sleep though, let me know. You have plenty on your mind, you need to rest, too."

She nodded in reply, "The same to you, as well."

"That all sounds good, Ebony!" Luffy was having the time of his life, pulling meat directly off of the bone with his teeth, one cooked leg in one hand and another in the other hand. It was almost like a tennis match, watching him bounce between the two of them.

We ate in silence for a bit longer, before finishing our meals. I went to relieve Zoro from his position on watch, whilst Sanji lay out the meal for him and the others went off to bed.

I couldn't help but wonder if there as something else that I was missing. I had written out the plot, as I could remember it, in a locked journal that was tucked safely away, but the human mind wasn't perfect and memories couldn't always be trusted. I knew the bigger plot points off by heart, but the little blips along the way didn't always register until after they had happened (case in point, Baroque Works on Little Garden and the ambush by Wapol).

By the time that Sanji had finished cleaning up in the kitchen, it was well on it's way to being completely dark.

"It's a bit chilly, isn't it?"

"Yep, it's definitely cold." Sanji came up beside me, resting his arms against the ledge and placing his head on his hands, looking forward. "Its going to be a full moon soon by the looks of it."

"You know, there's a sort of legend from back home about full moons."

I was feeling nostalgic, but I missed home and it was in the quiet moments like this that made it even harder.

Sanji turned to me, taking a drag from his cigarette. "Yeah?"

"There's a myth that people go mad during the full moon, it's where the word lunacy comes from. Because of Luna, the moon." I smiled, "It's funny, when I was a kid there was a playground that all these kids would go to and one night there happened to be a night market on and all these children, including myself that decided it would be a fantastic idea to live up to the madness rumour and act like wild children, howling at the moon. Our parents weren't happy, that's for sure."

He laughed. "I cannot see you acting like that, Ebony-san."

"Just Ebony, Sanji." He pouted but knew that I wouldn't let up until he called me by my name. His weird chivalry thing wasn't as bad around me, I had noticed, which was a good thing. "And yeah, I was a pretty rambunctious child; I'm not sure how my parents put up with me, to be honest."

"Zeff used to have to chase away pirates and criminals who thought that they would be able to kidnap the supposedly sheltered kitchen kid. He'd use them as training tools for me actually."

"How'd that work out?"

The conversation went on from there until Luffy and Zoro came up to take over the watch.

When the morning came, Usopp had convinced Carue to become his pack mule, carrying planks of wood to fix Merry up.

"What was that guy on about anyway? I've never heard of a pirate called Wapol! He had a ship that no normal pirate would be able to afford!"

"They did call him Highness, so he's probably a royal in exile or something." I offhandedly mentioned, grabbing a hammer and carefully slotting the plank into place.

The soft giggle sounded again. I know that I heard it, and Usopp whipped around, as if trying to find the source but shrugged it off when it didn't happen again.

"Don't pay them any mind, Usopp. They were just a bunch of idiots."

Sanji was correct, of course, but I wondered if he knew of Wapol, at least in passing. I know that Vivi had, so it would make sense that Sanji might have.

"More importantly, it's been pretty damn cold for a while now."

"That's for damn sure." The nail that I had been hammering slipped and almost went through my finger. "Fuck!"

"You alright Ebony?"

"Damn it! It's just this hammer, I just keep slipping."

This set Sanji off, not at me, but at Usopp for making a 'lady do the work while your slacking off!'

"It's all good, Sanji! I've got to pull my weight around here!"

"The weather is proof that we're close to an island." Vivi had come out on deck, it was Zoro and Luffy's turn to watch over Nami. (Zoro was there to make sure Luffy followed the instructions Vivi and I had left and not do anything stupid.) "Sanji, watch carefully for land on the horizon please!"

"Sure thing!"

"There must be a winter island nearby."

"Winter island?"

I whimpered, I was going to be an absolute nuisance for this entire trip, but cold weather always brought the worst out in me. I wasn't used to it at all.

"In terms of climate, the islands along the Grand Line are classified in four different ways." Vivi explained, "Summer, Spring, Autumn and Winter, after the seasons. And each of these four types generally have four seasons of their own. You really need to be able to survive sixteen different seasons in one go if you really think about it."

Well, different seasons in one go was something that I could comfortably say that I was used to.

"The Grand Line is incredibly unpredictable and every island would have their own distinct climates, which is why if the climate is consistent on the Grand Line that means that you're close to an island."

"She's right!" Sanji called from the watch tower, "There's land up ahead! LAND AHOY!"

Hearing the running feet of the Captain and having completed the hammering of the planks, I decided that it would be best to go and check up on Nami, passing the captain on the way down.

"How's everything going?"

Luffy turned to me, still running, "She's going to be better soon! We can get her a doctor!"

I gave him a grin and a thumbs up and continued on my way, shouting back at him.

"You might need a coat, Captain!"

A/N: Thank you all so much for your continued support! I'm not sure when the next update will be, as I'm in my third week back at university and it's getting pretty hectic already and there's not a whole lot of time for me to do personal projects (such as this fic), but I can guarantee that the next update will be in the next month or so.