Hey guys! I'm back, there's not much else to do in quarantine! I had a lot of fun doing this chapter, and I have to thank you for all the reviews I got that made me sit down and get it done in a day.

By the way, Gelly is pronounced "Jelly"

Goomy's antennae wiggled as she stared at Sunny, her wobbly mouth opening in shock as her gelatinous body started quivering in excitement. Sunny hopped on Luffy's shoulder, leaning over the top of his head.

"AH! The snot's alive!" Luffy yelped, pulling back. Sunny was so excited he leaned forward, his paws losing hold and slipping down the front of Luffy's face as he gave the fellow pokemon an exuberant sniff of greeting. "Ahh, Sunny, stop, you're in my EYES!" Luffy protested to deaf ears.

The goomy-Gelly- launched into the air with a bounce and landed on the counter a second before Sunny leaped there himself, closing the gap between them neatly. The next second, she was wrapping her antennae around Sunny's paw and hopping up and down on the counter. "A cyndaquil! A little cyndaquil! Gosh, I can't believe it! I haven't seen any other pokemon since I got here!"

Sunny shook himself from his shock. He opened his mouth to speak when he realized that this was the first time since his mom he had a chance at a normal conversation. Not with a hundreds-foot whale, or a clueless pidgey, or the crew who understood him once in a blue moon. He choked on his first greeting before trying again. "H-Hi, Gelly, I'm Sunny. Great to meet you, really great!"

"Wait, yours is like mine? Are they talking to each other?" Ace asked, watching the pair.

"Yeah, Sunny can talk to all sorts of weird guys, like giant whales and pigeons and stuff. Hey, did you get Gelly by it sneaking on your ship too?"

"No, she fell from the sky three months ago or so, landed on my head," Ace laughed.

Gelly nodded with her whole body again, releasing Sunny's leg. "The ground disappeared below me! It was so scary, all of a sudden I was falling, right over the Whitebeard's ship! Have you heard of them? They're really strong! Especially Ace and our old man."

"Wait-the ground disappearing-that's-that was a forest?" Sunny demanded.

"Yep! It was on fire! I thought I was gonna die for sure-even though I'm resistant. Oh, all the leaves burning, what a waste!" she moaned. "Then all of a sudden-"

"-It was like you were in a beam of light, falling..."

"Yes! And I that's when I landed on Ace's head, nearly knocked him out! If I wasn't goo..." She shuddered.

Sunny's breath caught in his throat. If Gelly had fallen in the same way, on the same day in their forest, his sleuth-his first sleuth-could be out there still, right? His father and Vesper and Red could be out there, looking for him!

Sunny knew he should share seeing the legendary, Hoopa, in the forest, but something about the great pokemon's glowing yellow eyes and scary expression as they warped them dried the words in his throat. The experience still felt too personal to share, even if it was selfish of him to keep it.

Ace pulled him from his thoughts, by tipping his hat up. "It'll be trouble if we stay in one place like this so long, how about we find somewhere else to catch up, little brother? Before we attract the wrong type of attention. Gelly?"

"On it!" Gelly chirped, bouncing onto his head, where Ace replaced the hat.

"She doesn't do well in the sun," Ace explained. Sunny climbed back on Luffy's shoulder as they exited the bar. "Now, how about we get out of this town?"

Sunny sighed, looking at Ace's orange cowboy hat. She'd been a lot easier to talk to than he'd expected. He slapped his cheeks to try to derail his thoughts. Still...he was just glad she was nice enough to hold up the conversation.

"I don't recommend trying," came a dry voice from behind them, successfully jolting Sunny from his cheerful musings. The three pirates turned around. A gray-haired man was learning against the wall of the bar they'd just exited. Smoke from two cigars wafted with every word. "I was just coming in to join you two, it's too bad we couldn't do this over a pint."

Sunny swung his head around as a familiar black-haired swordswoman exited an alley across from them, a platoon of soldiers behind her. "Ready when you are, Captain Smoker!" she declared.

The pirate brothers exchanged wry grins. "RUN!"

In no time at all, the three of them were pelting down the street, Luffy grabbing Ace and bazooka-ing them onto a rooftop.

"Shishishi! Sunny! Any sign of the crew?" Luffy asked.

Sunny, never the eyes of the crew, looked around helplessly at the roofs around them. "No?" he supplied.

"Then they're missing out!"

"No, we are! Why are we running again?" Ace called back, securing his hat to his head and hopping down to ground level where the stampede of pursuing Marines were coming from.

"Oh, right. They looked pretty dumb," Luffy realized, hopping off the roof after his older brother and sending off a gum-gum whip at half a dozen unsuspecting Marines.

Sunny hopped around helplessly on the roof before launching himself off the roof and tumbling ungracefully to a stop. The first thing he processed where the team of Marines staring at him with horror. Then to his right-no, they weren't looking at him, they were looking at Ace as a raging fire burst from his hands. It created a fiery spiral toward the Marines-and himself-bigger than he'd seen from any pokemon, his parents included. Sunny prickled in shock, nowhere near as horrified as Ace looked. The logia user tried to reign in his attack, but it was too late. The blazing inferno encompassed the shrew pokemon, raging past and burning the Marines a dozen paces back.

In the midst of the firestorm, Sunny could only see roils of red, orange, and yellow and hear Ace's desperate, wordless cry.

The little pokemon had never felt so much fire, breathed it. It burned, it was alive, it was so, so powerful. His own fire rose to join it, until he couldn't tell where his fire ended and Ace's began.

It was almost gone too quick-shorter than Ace's scream. Leaving an alleyway full of ash and burnt all the way to the roofs, garbage piles incinerated, Marines incapacitated, unconscious, or rolling on the ground in flames.

The energy, the sheer power Sunny was feeling was unparalleled. Fire resurged from his back like a furnace, extending out around him twice as large and much hotter, it sparked from his mouth with every breath. His eyes burned yellow. The world was sharper. His body felt warm, uncomfortably fevered. He met eyes with Luffy, looking with shock at his brother, and Ace, panic loosening into incomprehension at Sunny. Were these Ace's flames? He harnessed fire too, not just fire, but the most incredible fire Sunny had ever experienced. It was sentient, pulling to be used, urging to rejoin Ace. He chuffed, staring down the other fire-user. Then his eyes flickered to the marine captain fast approaching, hand extended toward Luffy. Spirals of fire raced Sunny as he charged past the brothers, slamming into Smoker. The Marine captain dissipated into smoke and reformed with a stagger a few feet away. Sunny skid to a stop, flames licking his path.

"What is-" He turned to Tashigi to ask but was cut off as a massive blast of flames caused him to roll out of the way. Then another, and a third in quick succession from the rat, burning the side of his captain's jacket and leaving a trail of ash on stone. "Tch."

The burning rodent was on him with the largest blast yet, a cone of flame too wide to dodge, too strong to block, and impossible for his logia devil fruit to contest. He landed further back, sweating, and cast his smoldering cloak aside, drawing his jitte. The cigars in his mouth had been reduced to nubs. Despite that, his mouth formed into a slow grin.

Tashigi was on her transponder snail, shouting for backup.

Giddy with energy, Sunny took a deep breath to unleash another massive ember, only to realize he'd used all Ace's fire and expended his own. A wave of dizziness overcame him, his heart hammering in his ears. His sinuses felt strangely clogged.

"'CHOO!" Sunny sneezed a spout of fire and soot so forcefully he landed on his butt.

A quiet chuckle came from his side a moment later, Ace picking him and Luffy up. "It's getting a little too hot here, even for me. Let's find a new spot." Then his legs turned to fire and he shot up into the air with the two Strawhats in tow.

"WHOAAAAA! COOL!" Luffy cheered. "Ace and my Lieutenant are so awesome!"

"Quiet, idiot! We're making an escape!" Ace yelled back, equally loudly. In moments, they were soaring above the town, passing rooftops higher and higher in the air, heading to the sparkling blue water. Ace squinted into the distance, looking at each Strawhat tucked into his arms.

"Which way's your ship? We won't be able to fit on my ride."

He looked down at Sunny to see the blue and yellow pokemon was digging his paws into Ace's bicep with bruising force and the tiny creature's eyes were wide open, blank, and watery. His face had taken on a darker blue hue that screamed either airsick or afraid of heights. Ace's suspicion was confirmed a second later when Sunny's head tipped back foaming from the mouth.

"Ah! There's my ship! Her name is Going Merry! Bring us down!" Luffy pointed excitedly. Ace descended as Luffy yelled out to his crew and Vivi gathered on the deck, jumping in surprise to see him approaching from the sky carried by a burning man.

"Yo," Ace cheerfully greeted, dropping Luffy onto the deck as they landed and tipped his hat. The crew couldn't help but notice the hat wobbled slightly after the man removed his hand. "I'm returning your captain and weak-stomached lieutenant."

"Lieutenant?" Sanji muttered, though technically, he supposed, the pipsqueak had been promoted by Luffy from Junior Lieutenant of Fire after Drum Island. The idea that he was the lieutenant of the crew, and had authority...He sweat slightly imagining Sunny ordering the crew around, before soothing himself with a puff of his cigarette. "Sorry-who are you?" He asked before Zoro inevitably demanded it.

Luffy jumped back onto his feet with a massive grin. "Good, everyone's in one place!"

"You're the one who wandered off," Usopp pointed out. "We were supposed to be gone an hour to get critical supplies. We've been waiting for you guys on the ship for an hour."

"Shishishi, you're funny, Usopp."

Sunny wiggled, prompting Ace to set him down. He stumbled about dizzily for a second before giving up and planting his butt on the deck, deciding that he would not travel by air for a good long time.

Nami glanced between the three of them. "Captain, you want to tell us who he is, and why you guys were flying around?"

Luffy dusted his hat off and replaced it on his head. "Smoker-guy and his lackeys from Loguetown found us and Ace had to fly us out of there cause Sunny attracted too much attention with his attack. Oh, and he's a pirate, too. Ace, want to join my crew?"

"Quit asking random people to join the crew!" Usopp yelled, slamming the edge of his hand into Luffy's skull.

Sunny turned his gaze to Ace. "You're really Luffy's brother?"

Chopper was the only one to react. Choking on air before his eyes bugged out and he screamed, "Eh? Luffy's your brother?!" Pointing an accusing hoof at Ace.

The rest of the crew balked at that. Ace's hat quivered in laughter again.

"Shishishi Zoro, Nami, Usopp, Sanji, Chopper, Vivi, this is my big brother, Ace. Ace, this is my crew!"

"YOU HAVE A BROTHER?" The crew chorused in shock.

After some shock, confusion, and some name-calling, the crew gathered in the galley, where Sunny helped Sanji heat up their biggest pot of tea. Ace and Luffy were chatting excitedly, like days had gone by since last seeing each other, and not three years. When Sanji poured him a cup of tea, Sunny grabbed another cup, holding it in his mouth by the handle and hopping onto the table to set a second one down in front of Ace. Sunny stared blankly at the confused Sanji as the cup rattled as spun to a stop, recovering from being set down slightly off-kilter.

"Two cups?" Sanji ventured, hesitantly pouring the second cup of black tea.

"Thanks, little fella," Ace said, giving Sunny a scratch on the head as he set his hat upside down on the table. Gelly blinked slowly, antennae pulling up from where they were drooping across her face.

"Goom!" She grinned brightly in thanks to Sunny and reached her antennae out for the cup.

Usopp, Nami, and Vivi recoiled, Sanji jerking the teapot back and throwing his hand out to catch the stray splash of hot tea from the spout in his palm. He set the tea pot down and went to dry his hand with a curse. "What the hell?" The cook finally grumbled intelligibly.

Sunny grinned at his sleuth, overtly gesturing between them, careful to enunciate. "She and I are the same. We are pokemon." He didn't know a lot about goomy, but looking at her and how she acted, he knew she was a dragon-type. The first dragon type he'd ever seen, but he knew instinctually, same as she knew he was a cyndaquil. "Gelly's Ace's partner like I'm..." Sunny trailed off, looking thoughtfully at the tea breathing hot steam on his snout. When he was in the forest he never had ascribed to the human-pokemon partnership. Now it almost felt strange to think about having a team without one. Was it Usopp, who he protected when the boy was scared? Was it Nami, who had taken him to her island, who he'd snuck into the Arlong Pirate's base to find? Was it Sanji who kept him fed? Or even Chopper whom he owed his life to? Zoro, who kept him from going too far on the mountain? Or Luffy, who cheerfully led the crew, gave him a spot on the ship? Luffy didn't seem someone who would consider having a partner, to him, nakama was nakama, right?

"...Like I'm a Strawhat." Sunny concluded, feeling both confident and confused. Crew, sleuth, nakama, party, no word seemed to sum them up. He wasn't a captured pokemon, he was one living freely, working independently yet on a team.

He looked around at the others. Usopp had run to get his chart to jot down more notes. Sunny didn't even both to look what he was doing. Half of it was at least partially inaccurate, and that half was everything Sunny hadn't drawn for them. But the crew understood the gist-they'd come across another 'elemental.' They devolved into chatter.

He looked over at Gelly for approval. To his delight, her wobbly grin was still in place as her body wiggled akin to a nod. "You're stronger than I thought, by the way-you really showed Ace up back there!"

"I was surprised-I didn't think a human could do that. It was a dumb mistake-stepping into an attack like that-I was lucky he didn't have water powers."

Gelly puffed up like she was going to protest his self-admonishment so he quickly continued in a different direction. Speaking through a stream of consciousness wasn't going to work here-he had to remember she could understand his every word. It wasn't as comforting a thought as it had been an hour ago. "But some fire is compatible for me, so I kind of just knew I needed to use it?" He tried.

Gelly's easy, wobbly smile returned to her face. "Really? Fire really is awesome, I've always wondered what it's like to be so attuned to an element. Well," she stopped to snigger slightly. "Sometimes when I think his head's getting a little too big for his hat, I sprinkle a little rain down on him. It kind of...steams off him in little fires and really messes up his hair. He may not look it, but he actually gets upset if his hair gets frizzy. Hehe-ho-ha!" Her body partially collapsed as she fell into a fit of guffaws. "He can be totally vain! He took forever to figure out it was me! He thought he'd 'pissed off the sky!'" Gelly's body lost whatever remained of its solidity. Panicking, Sunny upended his steaming tea into his mouth and held the cup to the side of the table to catch part of her body that had begun to ooze off the table. Once he saw it was gathering in the cup, he let out a weak sigh of relief.

The laughter tapered to a stop and one blinking eye appeared in the cup which he held up. The slime pulled itself out of the cup, and the rest of her facial features rejoined her round, green cheeks and and wilted antennae. "Don't worry about me, I'm not gonna fall apart," she said with mirth, her eye quirking similar to a human raising an eyebrow. Sunny was suddenly hit with the uncontrollable urge to hide his face as he felt the cream fur on his cheeks redden. That must have looked so stupid to her, he despaired inwardly. It's not like she was melting!

A moment later, he felt a cool, squishy, but solid limb wrap around one of his paws and gently pull it away from his face. Gelly's curious face was up next to him. "Don't worry, you didn't offend me or anything! Everybody I'm around is used to me going slime so I didn't consider what it looked like to someone new! It's hard to remember my form when I laugh!"

When Sunny didn't immediately offer up something to say, she dove back in, looking across the table to all the pirates in the room. "Your crew is so cute! Is this everyone?"

"Huh?" Sunny had rather thought the crew was getting very big, especially with Vivi along with them. "Is yours bigger?"

"The old man has a whole fleet of ships!" Gelly tittered. "We're all his sons and daughters, even me. He's the biggest human I've ever seen-bigger than an ursaring!" Then she thought for a moment, before continuing uneasily. "Well, there was one person who was that size too, but we don't...Ace doesn't like to talk about him."

That piqued Sunny's interest, he almost looked around to gauge the rest of the crew's interest in the statement when he remembered that they were having their own conversation and they couldn't understand her anyway. He leaned forward toward the jelly dragon and started to ask when Ace straightened up and crossed his arms in finality.

"Sorry we can't stay for long. We're after a major criminal...goes by Blackbeard. He used to be a member of the Whitebeards and my subordinate. Before we committed the worst possible crime on a ship...killing a crewmate." Ace said, though his words were grave, his face was deceitfully casual.

The Strawhats balked, except for Luffy and Zoro, who looked somber.

Gelly sweat dropped. "That's what Ace doesn't talk about. He really seems to open up to his brother, though."

"As the commander, it's my duty to find him. We were asking around after him in Alubarna before Luffy distracted me." Ace stood up before bowing to the crew. "I forgot to introduce myself. Name's Portgas D. Ace. My little brother's a major pain, so I'm so grateful to all of you for watching his back." As he spoke Gelly smiled up Ace's arm and gave Sunny a wave.

Once they were back outside, Ace planted his hat back on his head, covering Gelly and handed Luffy a piece of paper. "Here, Luffy. This paper will let us meet again on the Grand Line." He grinned, winking at the rest of the crew and he crouched on the ship's rail. "Having a dumb little brother makes a big brother worry. I'm sure he'll cause you all trouble. Take care of him for me, eh, little man?" The last statement was directed to Sunny, who had followed closely behind, as the Whitebeard pirate ruffled the short fur on Sunny's head. With that, Ace jumped off the ship and back onto the small boat he'd tethered there. "Take care, little brother."

Ace sped off, leaving the Strawhat Pirate crew touched in his wake.

"I wish I had a brother!" Chopper wailed to the sky.

"Who could have imagined our captain would have such a grounded sibling?" Nami wiped a tear from her eye.

The ship began its journey from the port city of Nanohana up the Sandora river to head toward the Yuba Oasis, where the rebels were. Just trying to keep up with the conversation had Sunny's head spinning. So he was busy playing with a moth fluttering around a sack of potatoes when Vivi sprung out of her seat, sending her chair backward to punctuate a debate he'd missed. "We can stop the rebels! Even if there's 700,000 of them! We can stop this senseless violence! I won't let Baroque Works do what they want to my country!"

Sunny stopped in his tracks at the loud declaration, accidentally smushing the moth on the galley floor. Oh no, they had just cleaned the galley this morning. He was in trouble now. The real question was if Nami or Sanji would catch him first.

"Vivi..." Nami said, a small smile formed on her lips.

"I'll make a desert-crossing lunch for us then," Sanji cheered.

It was a really moving moment. Yep, Sunny loved this crew. He watched the princess as he very slowly rubbed the moth remains into a crack in the wood. Maybe he got away with it? Well, in any case, it seemed like his digression was a lot less important than this emotional moment. He'd definitely chosen to zone out of the wrong conversation. He padded over to Vivi's side, and reached up to pat her on the thigh in solidarity.

Vivi looked back down at Sunny and graced him with a gentle smile. "Thank y-ARGHHHHH!" She yelled as she noticed the red goo dripping off Sunny's paw, kicking him across the room with a scream of digust and shock.

Karma found a way.

Thank you so much for reading! I felt like I finally, really got to dive into Sunny's character here. Please let me know what you think!