She took it back.
This Strange New World sucked balls!
…
They were on the same small fucking boat as always, Little Law had a raging fever, it rained cats and fucking dogs and Rosinante - apparently Marine-fucking-spy Rosinante - was trying to run straight to the boat while trying to avoid being shot by hail of bullets…
Somehow she was not fucking optimistic about his chances. (She might be channeling her inner Xanxus a bit too much, but fuck… at this point she needed that inner Xanxus. So… Fucking… Much! The brat had an excellent idea on how to deal with this much bullshit!)
The worst fucking thing about their situation though was the fucking fact that before Rosinante went to… ah liberate the Devil Fruit they agreed that it would be better to keep her presence hidden. (It was a smart thing to do, to keep an ace in a sleeve for a rainy day… She loathed it with a passion!) Both from his not-so-sane brother (like fucking Belphegor levels of insane) and the Marines he's betraying in that very moment. And don't let her even start on the topic of such a badly entangled situation that the no-longer-Corazon found himself in.
Skull moved a bit to cover Law's shivering form that little bit more and let him leach off more of her warmth (which may or may not be a bit raised by the Flames) and in what long time ago became a practiced move Propagated her opponents interest in the thief they were chasing and not a boat he was running to, as well as the feelings of danger they got off him (very useful trick when running a join op). Hopefully that would be helpful in getting them the fuck out of danger… If not? Well… Then fuck all the deals, intervention by Cloud has been known to be a successful ending of any dispute since long before Earthlings died out.
(There was a reason her so called fellow-fucking-Elements were considered The World's Greatest by the time The Curse hit. And let her fucking tell you that some people needed all the fucking help possible… The things Reborn considered 'disguises' were... Well, by the time their fourth mission together rolled around she set up a permanent 'that thing over there is more important than my shitty disguise' field around him. Though without her there, together with the other Arcobaleno, her Flames had to expire as well… Well, Skull wished Reborn's all the fucking luck with sneaking anywhere now...)
With a bit of a play on Propagating air pressure and temperature, Skull prepared the weather incident that will hopefully help hide them from both small fries Rosinante got the Fruit off of, Donquixote Pirates that would soon find out that the Fruit is not where they expected and that incoming Rear-Admiral that is supposed to get the Fruit from Rosinante… And maybe even they'll manage to get away far enough for them to somehow plan their next moves. After all, dealing with this mess won't be easy.
(Manipulating the weather via Flames was another trick that should be common for literally every Cloud and Storm around since Propagation and Disintegration were so easily transalatable into playing on the pressure… but somehow it never was… And she still had no idea why. Like… with them being named after fucking weather phenomens… why do people not use that?)
Though the mess part was probably par the course… After all, she dared to run away from the Tri-Ni-Sette mess and the entire Underworld situation. It was only fitting that she'd land her ass in not only another Underworld but also on the fucking collision course with local so-called law enforcement. And why is it that every time she's in any kind of contact with those, there's always a clusterfuck incoming?
…
Deep breath and back to work.
…
Skull took a good look at the running Rosinante and decided that he wouldn't need any more of her help at the moment. It seemed that the entire I-am-a-Marine shtick at least taught him how to run properly… Even if that damn clumsiness of his is not unfortunately a part of his cover. (As she hoped dearly.) She wondered how long it took for the Marines to teach him at least that minimum of grace he has when running… And how much of it was thanks to the guy she caught Rosinante talking via the snail a day ago. Admiral Sengoku was apparently someone rather high-up in the Marine ladder. To be raised by an Admiral and still be ready to throw it all away for a child's life. Now that was someone Skull could be fond of.
(And if somewhere deep in her mind there was a part that kept trying to remember how Reborn dealt with Cavallone heir's eternal clumsiness? There had to be any kind of advantage to being from another world here, right?)
"Let's get the fuck away from here!" The subject of her thoughts declared once he got close enough to safely jump onto their little boat. Quick rope-work (she was always a quick study… No matter what other Arcobaleno thought) and they were ready to sail away from the force of Rosinante's jump.
Another bit of Propagation to the force generated by the jump and they were almost skipping above the waves. Once they were far enough she twisted her Will just so and her earlier preparations paid off in the form of a truly terrible storm (waterspout included in the deal).
Skull carefully switched places with a bit of wide-eyed Rosinante so that she could move their boat as needed and he could keep Little Law as warm as possible. (Whatever one can say about his look… those feathers of his were warm as fuck.)
"Where are we going?!" She called out above the roaring storm following their boat… Wide wall of rain, wind and terrible waves followed in their wake but never made contact and always gave just enough wind for her to steer the little boat. Her rope-work was abso-fucking-lutely solid but navigation… Well it was a good thing that she learned everything she could about weather phenomena and how to summon and control the weather around her.
"Back to Swallow Island!" The blonde called back and Skull focused on mentally mapping the route back as well as a plan on how to suggest to everyone that they went to the Legendary Grand-Line… A storm in the Calm Belt should be enough of a suggestion to focus both the Marines and Donquixote Pirates' eyes on the Grand Line for long enough. She just needed to learn if the Haki Rosinante had been explaining about was able to pick up her Flames…
But that was a concern for another day… For now there was a boat, her Flames and unforgiving Ocean.
…
Maybe this World didn't suck so badly after all…
√ -√v-√ -√v—
Their coming back to the Swallow Island was anticlimatic as fuck. Among the Skull's constantly upheld efforts to fuck with the weather of the North Blue to keep Doflamingo's crew beffudled and away (and what kind of name is that?) and Rosinante's counterintelligence efforts to keep Marines out of their backs, the touchdown in an abandoned grove and getting to one of the town's with Little Law undisturbed was… so uneventful it was almost strange.
Once they got there though (playing a happy family with Law wrapped in multitude of blankets, Skull in a stolen dark cloak and Rosinante out of his pirate get up, they even managed to look civilian… If one didn't look at them closely, that is) Rosinante left them in a rented room and went to establish some kind of background in the town for them. Of course for all that he insisted that the Fruit would magically cure Law he was not willing to do the deed and force feed the brat it…
Men…
And so Skull, very much unhappily, cleaned the child, put a cold compress on his forehead and Propagated him back to wakefulness. Just as up till then she was Propagating his immune system.
(Cloud Flames were cheating even among other Flame Actives… here? Where the 'powers' one could have were much more straightforward and most people lacked education to get really creative with them? Even for her very much skeeved sense of justice, the power difference was not even funny)
"Up Little Law, up… we have a magical cure for you… won't you wake up for me?" She started to whisper softly, waiting for Little One's attention to sharpen out of sleep and focus on her. It… took a while.
Let it be 'officially' said that Skull was very unhappy with the fact that she has not pressed them for the details about Amber Lead. Even at the cost of the bratling's comfort.
"S-kull?"
"That's right Little Law, it's me… We're safe here. Can you focus?" Pale hand moved his hair from the still too warm forehead and Skull herself made sure her lips would give the most soothing out of her smiles.
"Focus?" Bleary eyed child parroted back, luckily no longer slurring but still with just a glint of clarity in his eyes.
"That's right. Can you focus on me?"
"Y-yeah" Little Law focused his eyes on her with visible difficulty but… that had to be good enough, didn't it?
"I have the Ope Ope no Mi here" She raised the strangely shaped Fruit up (and thanks to whatever they consider holy that Rosinante explained that the Fruit's shape was normal for those and that it would taste terrible… she'd probably do something painful should she find out when feeding the bratling with it) "We've told you about the Fruit, remember?"
"Y-yeah… a cure"
"That's right, Cora-san said it's part of a cure for you." She agreed because… well what else was she supposed to do? Even if magical fruit was a stretch even for her… they believed it. "Now you need to eat it. Would you do it for me?"
"'M not hungry" Law whined but like a good child he was, opened his mouth to be fed the Fruit. Rosinante warned her that no one really knew how those Fruits worked but that only some of them were giving power even if cut into pieces and not bit into, but she was so not going the risk Law's survival just to not get sprinkled with Fruit juice, so she carefully helped the bratling to bit the Magical Fruit.
(Incidentally she did end up soaked in juice and half chewed pulp, but the bratling ate the Fruit… and went to sleep again… It seemed like she needed to have a nice talk with Rosinante about giving up needed information.)
√ -√v-√ -√v—
For some reason Little Law eating the damn thing didn't cure him immediately… Who would have fucking thought?
…
All Hail Propagation!
And its ability to Propagate one's health!
√ -√v-√ -√v—
With Skull keeping the bratling healthy, Rosinante could focus on gathering more information about both Amber Lead and Ope Ope no Mi abilities, as well as keeping them as unsuspicious as possible to the local population.
Which wasn't easy, what with the one time Law run away in a snit and came back with a polar bear mink cub and a damn cursed nodachi (because clearly their job was too easy with just pretending to be a family and caring about feverish little brat…At least Bepo the Mink was polite).
And in between all of that Rosinante was helping her in finding out how her Flames would resonate with other's Haki and whether she would still be able to unlock and use it (spoiler alert - she could!)
In a few words - they had a busy few weeks in that little town.
So of course in keeping with their luck - just as Rosinante finally succeeded in showing Skull how to channel her stubbornness into Armament Haki and not Propagation, a blue dome sprung above them and while at one moment she was about to hit Rosinante's very thoroughly enforced hands with her own black hand, in the next one… she was on the other side of a clearing and there was a small body throwing itself at her and wailing about how she 'didn't need to kill Cora-san and how Little One will be good now'.
…
Just their luck indeed…