First, I forgot to mention in the previous update, but I really appreciate the people who have favorited, followed and review. Even if there are some readers who haven't done the thing above, I am still grateful for your time. Thanks for reading!

Warning: There's some graphic stuff of the chapter and a character (or multiple) deaths that are sometimes described. I personally think it isn't anything too intense, but please use caution before beginning to read. I dunno I was listening to so much Nirvana while writing this and I could have possibly been slightly desensitized whilst enjoying some good old fashion grunge.

Two weeks pass, and Anne pushed the conversation between the two men, and her irrational fear of it to the back of her mind. She doesn't forget, necessarily, but she doesn't think about it either.

It scares her; it completely terrifies her. She can't even comprehend why the notion of marines 'showing the East who's boss' frightened her so much, but she feels it in her bones, and it aches. But Anne just chalked it up to gossiping sailors with booze clouding up their words.

She doesn't acknowledge the foreboding in her chest.

She just continued on, like everything was completely normal.

But then, it happened.

The clouds started rolling in, and the air changed, and the wind was furious. This occurrence alone had put everyone on edge. Bad weather was unusual in the East Blue, but they did have storms every now and again.

That wasn't the issue though.

It was the fact that it had sprung up out of no where-there was normally some sort of warning, like the air getting colder or the waves turning rough very abruptly-and that didn't happen. It was sunny skies one minute, and the next the fringe of the horizon was a was ominous and cruel noir, descending upon them like the ravaging tempest it was.

That sort of storm was considered an ill omen in those parts.

"What do you think, Jeremiah?" Maman asked her grandfather worriedly, sending Anne's contemplative mood to a screeching halt.

Her Papa sighed. "I dun like it. Not one bit. Old Lady Mary says it's a tempest fer the ages. And Old Lady Mary's never wrong."

Old Lady Mary was the village's elder. She had seen many summers, many springs, and Old Lady Mary knew her stuff. She was, like, 100 years old or something like that. She just couldn't seem to drop dead-or act the least bit old for that matter. Needless to say, Old Lady Mary was probably the only person on Juro that gave Anne the chills. Maybe it was her glass eye, but that was mere speculation on Anne's part for the most. But that eyes was certainly a primary component to Old Lady Mary's eccentricness; it completed in full the unsettling feeling that the old mateon emitted in spades.

Maman grumble a bit as she flipped some rather unappetizing buckwheat pancakes. "I agree. I don't like it, Jeremiah. I don't like it one bit. It just don't sit right." The woman flipped the pancakes expertly, and Anne got a waft of buckwheat that she could have most certainly gone without.

"Maman," Anne whined childishly as she stole some of Roger's apple slices. "What're we gonna do about the cabbages? You and Papa and me did all that work and none of its gonna survive this thing. Ain't we gonna do something' about it?"

"I don't know. Maybe use tarps?" Papa suggested, before Maman could even get a word out.

Maman let out an irritated breath. "Tarps are expensive; you know that."

"But useful enough." Anne noted. Maman shoot her the look. "Or not. Forget I said anythin' geez…"

Roger flailed in his high chair, baring his teeth at Anne for the loss of his apple slice. The kid knew how to hold a grudge. The ten year old swiftly dodged a stray spoon flying her way, and stifled her laughter as it smack the back of Maman's head. The aging woman turned her head around, very slowly, and in a manner that was reminiscent of a vengeful ghost, hauntingly gaunt shadows over her face and everything.

"Do you two have anything to tell me?" Maman questioned gently, and it was all very misleading. Had she not had an intense black miasma around her, Anne would've thought she was asking about the weather.

"Uh-" Anne spluttered, pointing at Roger. "He did it. I didn' do anythin'. I swear."

There was a glint in Maman's eye that was not good for Anne's continued existence.

A beat of silence filled the small abode, and it was only broken when Maman turned her focus back on her pancakes.

"The matter remains that a storm is coming and we need to get ready for it." Maman asserted as she stacked the last of the pancakes up.

"But I hate barring the windows up! It's torture!" Anne howled tragically, Roger soon following suit. "Maman, it's like we're cag'd up animals! It ain't fair!"

"It don't matter if it's fair, Anne. Your safety is always more important than your comfortability." Maman brushed her whining off like it was nothing and it peeved Anne just a bit. Not to sorely or anything, but enough.

Papa laughed. "Judith, you and yer big words. 'Comfortability'! Ain't nobody say that 'round these parts."

Maman grumbled, massaging her temples while she set the plate of pancakes on the table. "Just eat and stop givin' me headaches ya mongrels."

For that brief moment in time, as Anne sat at that table, with sunlight filtering in through the windows and a breath drifting on in through the cracks in the walls and doors, she felt what it was like to truly not have a care in the entire world.

Roger was at her side, laughing, kicking his feet more for the fun of it that any real animosity. Papa munched at his food, that got stuck in a full beard more often than not. And Maman leaned on their counter, her eyes warm as she watched her family. The sight was truly something to behold; a family meal at its best, chaos and quaintness all rolled up into one.

Anne allowed herself a smile that was for no one but her, and looked down at her plate piled high with dark brown and gritty pancakes that she really didn't like all that much. She hated those pancakes. But she always did love Maman enough to choke them down after drowning them in any kind of sugary syrup they had on hand.

That is the last time she ever got the chance to hate those pancakes.

She wishes she could sit at that table and loath them again without feeling nostalgia creep under her skin.

The weather was fearsome.

The wind sent shingles flying and tree branches hurtling of their trunks and the waves grew so large that people were concerned about the village getting massive flooding. The sky was a muddled ebony, with freakish bolts of lightning, that, when they hit the ocean it was like a whale doing a cannonball.

There was much talk about hurricanes, and whether this storm was one, but no one really made any effort to confirm anything based on a scientific standpoint. They were, after all, a farming community, and asking more questions than necessary was just tiring.

It wasn't the storm itself that was the problem-it was the duration of it all. A week of nothing but rain and wind was never good for Juro. Plants drowned, and so did there cultivators in piles and piles of debt.

This was actually the most terrifying part of the storm for everyone. Their livelihoods were on the line, and unless you were blessed with miracle crops, you were handing your children and grandchildren a sentence to a lifetime of farming.

The fact remained that the storm was still dangerous, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. It was raining too hard to tend to the fields, and too windy to fish or sail at all. So, basically, there was absolutely nothing to do. Thus resulting in Maman forcing Anne, Roger, and by principle, Papa, to stay indoors.

Thus, they had no warning when it started.

Only sudden, sharp, and bone chilling screams.

Years and years later, it would be remembered (or more accurately, forgotten) as the first, and only, Buster Call to be executed in the East Blue.

That moment, in Anne's recollection, was hell.

Out of the small cracks of their boarded up windows, all Anne could see was fire. Fire and fire and more fire. There were tornadoes of flame and dust and it just swallowed everything up whole: the village and the people desperately trying to run away. They never got far; always being swept off their feet at the last moment and dragged into their own deaths.

The sight was nauseating.

Maman blanched when she looked out the window, and her and Papa shared a look so brief that not even Anne, who was an expert at deciphering their secret language, could make out. She didn't even have time to protest as Maman threw her over her should and scooped up Roger out of his high chair and into her arms.

Roger wailed so loud, so very loud, and Anne was sure that the salt at her lips wasn't from dinner.

Anne hadn't known her Maman could run as fast as she did. She ran and ran, and she ran even when Anne knew that her joints were cracking painfully and that her feet were swelling up. Maman ran past the edge of the forest, past the brook, past the oldest tree on the island, and she kept running. She ran until her legs gave out, and all three of them came crashing to a halt.

Anne hiccuped, tears dripping off her cheeks, and Roger cried, snot everywhere, and Maman sobbed. Anne couldn't tell if it was from relief or terror.

Just for a moment, one, shining moment, Anne thought that Papa was going to come running after them, and then they'd steal a boat and sail off to some other Blue, or maybe even the Grandline.

Anne didn't care.

As long as if was away from the screaming.

"...-nne! Anne!"

And she was brought back to her senses, like she always was, and Maman shook her shoulders ferociously.

"Anne. Listen to me." There was silence, and Anne felt her stomach churn. She was going to be sick. "Anne," Her Maman continued, "I'm going back for your Papa, so stay here, hide, and if we're not back by nightfall, make sure you get off this island. I know your as crafty as I am."

"Ya can't." Anne said. Or she thought she said. It came out more as a hoarse croak than her really saying anything. "Ya can't. Ya can't just leave. What-" Anne paused, holding her head as if to still the light headedness that was drowning her and she gulped, loudly. "What if you don't come back? I ain't-I ain't no adult. I can't-"

Maman's eyes steeled, and she gripped Anne's shoulder tight.

"I can't leave your Papa. Annie, I can't. He's old, Annie, and he ain't the man he used to be, but he'll act like it. He's gonna tell them marines they ain't gonna burn that house down, and he'll get himself killed in the process. Annie, I'll be damned if I don't at least try to get him out her so we can escape together." Her Maman quiets, and Anne is sure that this is the first time in her life that she has seen her grandmother so terrified. Her hands shook, and her breath was shallow, and her eyes were so terribly wide. "Oh, Annie, but I don't want to leave you, or Roger." Her breath hitched. "Annie, I ain't got that Will your Papa always talks about, but I can make due. I'll come back if he ain't gonna listen. I just can't leave my babies on their own." Maman pressed a kiss her her forehead, then onto Roger's tear stained cheek.

"Hide." She whispered for turning to the other direction. She ran.

Anne knew that her Maman must've been in so much pain, but she ran anyway. Anne always knows that she didn't stop until she reached that house that she had grown up in.

Anne knows with all of her heart.

Anything less just wouldn't have been Maman.

And so the girl whose home was aflame sat in the dead husk of a tree. It had taken some effort to squeeze into it and then to make sure they were far enough up the hollow trunk to be unseen, but Anne had managed.

Then she waited.

Those next few hours were the longest of her life.

And the screams only got closer and closer.

Anne and Roger sat in an eerie silence, one of the likes that she had never experienced with her brother in her arms, and she shivered at the sweat that pooled in the dip of her collarbone and down the arch of her back. Her curls stuck to her scalp and she knew her face was most likely a deathly pale.

Anne had never had pure, unadulterated fear in her veins but this was it. This was it.

Then there were footsteps.

And then hope.

And then blood.

Anne felt her vision blur as she saw her Maman, stumbling, crimson on her check and her hand pressed against her side. The dark stain marring her working dress was so clearly her Maman's lifeblood, and there was simply nothing else it could have been. There were men in uniform on her heels, with a fridges snarl on the faces and cruelty in their eyes. They were so slow. So agonizingly slow. As if they were jogging after her dying grandmother for the fun of it. As if they were mocking her in her dying moments.

On Maman's head was a straw hat, free of any thick red liquid, any sign of fraying, and against all odds, looked like the only thing the world hadn't ruined. It's ribbon, blue and lovely by all accounts, seemed stark against the backdrop of crimson.

Anne's whole body quaked, and she felt like the earth was being ripped open, her whole self laid out bare with raw emotion that she didn't know what to do with herself. She thought she was going to die, then and there. Her everything hurt; it pained her so very badly and she could only barely stop herself from screaming as Maman tripped over her own feet.

She fell face first into the ground, and Papa's hat flew off her head and into the breeze, tumbling a good ten meters away from were Maman was groaning.

One of the marines cocked his rifle.

Anne covered her mouth and then slapped a hand on Roger's, turning the both of them away from the crack in the tree. She squeezed her eyes shut. Anne flinched when the shot rang frighteningly clear throughout the forest.

She shivered, grabbing onto Roger, who in turn clings unto her, even though she was sure he didn't understand what was going on in the least. Her shallow breath prickled in her chest, and blotted areas of black appear in her vision. Anne wanted to whimper, to cry, to wail, anything but the silence that she had to endure.

Anne doesn't faint, but instead gets to listen to the laughter of those marines.

The sound makes her physically ill, and she literally can feel her whole body convulse in a wrenching motion.

Their laughter grows softer and softer, until it's gone and they are alone. The wind howls over them, the storm obviously taking the liberty to build in its ferocity.

Papa's straw hat still sat there, where it landed, untouched.

Roger doesn't know what's going on, and Anne just wants it all to be over and done with. She rocks him back and forth in her arms, snot dripping down her chin and salty tears running fervently down her cheeks.

The only thing she had in her power at that moment was to crawl out of that tree, with Roger cradled into her chest, and place her too small apron over her Maman's head and chest. Anne doesn't pause to deliver some long winded speech, fueled by grief or rage or whatever emotion was boiling her blood. She just stares, and stares some more, as if willing her grandmother not to be dead. A sob escapes the back of her throat, through the whimpers and the tears, and her scream is drowned out only by the sound of the wind whipping through the trees. She shrieks, cradling her brother, her eyes squeezed shut and her heart breaking in her chest, knowing that her face would be turning a morbid shade of purple in the process. She stops only to breath, and even then, it doesn't quell the emotions swirling within her. Her hysteria is at fever pitch, and not even Roger's inhumanly strong pounding on her shoulders could bring her back to reality.

Her breath hitches, turning fast and shallow, and her fingers trembling something fierce.

For all her talk, for all Anne's intelligence, he strength, she was nothing more than a child in the face of death. Perhaps she didn't fear it, not like most people do, but when she stared at her Maman, there was fear in her veins, coursing through them just as surely as blood did.

If Maman could die this horribly, who was to say that Roger couldn't suffer the same fate? What did innocence or kindness mean in a world where an old woman could be executed mercilessly?

Nothing.

The answer was nothing.

It meant nothing to those marines, who were blindly following orders, and it meant nothing to their superiors.

It takes every once of everything she is to gather the pieces of herself in that moment; to take a deep breath, and to think about how she was going to get Roger and her off that God forsaken island. Anne turns her head away from the very nearly maddening sight of her Maman to focus on the straw hat that she had seen so many days of her life. It was perhaps the only thing she had left. It was proper, she thought, Roger being the only person she had left and her Papa's straw hat being the only thing.

She shuffled over to it, picked it up with a gentle hand, and placed it on Roger's head.

The was only one thing left to do.

Run.

And did she ever.

She ran until there wasn't any island left to run on-until she had reached an old fishermen's wharf, so rickety and dilapidated that it was practically just a collection of wood barely not floating away. She had recalled one of the few fisherman on Juro saying that this dock, while not very pretty looking, was just a few knots from an amazing fishing spot. Nobody ever believed him, and so, he was the only person on the whole island that bothered to use the thing.

The single dingy that bobbed furiously in the tumultuous waves of the storm could attest to that fact. Anne gulped, shivering, and still half in shock as she scrambled over to the small boat, and swiftly untied all the knots keeping the dingy on the bollard. There were oars underneath the floorboards, but there was no chance that Anne was going to be able to row in such fowl conditions. All she could do was let the boat go and hopefully not drown.

There wasn't a choice; there was no ifs or buts about the whole thing.

Either she left and lived or stayed and died. It was as simple as that.

And so Anne chooses the option she will continue to choose for many years to come.

She chooses to live.

I feel almost bad for this chapter being such a downer, and to be completely honest, I've never actually written so much angst and it's kinda weird. I'm also not sure if it flows right, but I guess it'll have to do, and it's really up to you guys to say if this chapter sucked or not. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, tragic backstory and all.

Please, if you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to review or PM me. I'm happy to be of any help. Constructive criticism is also very welcome, if anyone has anything to say.

Over and Out,

L & D