The next week saw him perched on that rock again, watching the strange green-haired Zoro discreetly. While his friends may've thought he didn't know the meaning of the word, Luffy could be careful when he wanted to!

Zoro had yet to spot him, though the human spent hours looking out at the water, one hand shielding his face from the sun and eyes squinted to see further. How funny was it that the very being he was looking for was little more than a few meters away, watching him right back?

Usopp, on the other hand, was not nearly so calm watching a human. The look of awe and wonderment in Luffy's eyes was making an awful, apprehensive feeling curl around in his gut, like he'd accidently eaten rotten kelp, and when Luffy sighed happily he felt his heart jump.

Ohh nononono this was so not good!

Panic made him try and jump on Luffy's tail to get him to pay attention, but Luffy merely flicked him off, intently watching the green-haired monster. What if it looked over when Luffy was above the rock and saw them? What if it TRIED TO EAT THEM!?

Usopp silently prayed that his friend would move away-

But nope.

Now he just felt like bubbling. One of these days Luffy's antics were going to cause him to have a mental breakdown!

"Luffy, c'mon, please," He begged, fins tapping along Luffy's tail, "It'll notice us!"

"Nahh," Luffy said, brushing Usopp off his tail with distracted ease, sending him tumbling in the water, "It'll be fine! He hasn't seen us yet, has he?"

"Yet!" Usopp half-screeched, trying to make Luffy see some sense, but the merman ignored him with an utter ease. Discomfort made him hold his tongue for a second, but desperation was a powerful motivator. "Luffy, if you don't stop watching him, I swear I'm going to tell Ace."

Luffy started, looking at him for the first time, eyes wide. "You promised!" He cried, sounding betrayed, but Usopp set his fins.

"I promised you I wouldn't say anything about collecting things, or learning human. This is watching one! It's dangerous Luffy!"

Luffy's lower lip quivered, and guilt welled up in Usopp, stinging and making him feel terrible – but he knew he'd feel even worse if his inaction caused Luffy to be caught by the human. "Please Luffy, let's just go. There's no point in watching him!"

Expression drawn and tight, Luffy slipped off the rock and into the water completely, swimming swiftly away from Usopp without even a goodbye.

Oh Mother of the Sea, he hoped he'd done the right thing.

The unfamiliar resentment Luffy felt in his chest made him curl in a tight ball, tail brushed by sea grass as Usopp swam past him with a downcast face. Why did his friend have to overreact so much?

Luffy had been careful, hadn't even let the green-haired human catch a look of his face – though that may've been more thanks to Nami more than himself. It was still a point that he hadn't!

A sigh made bubbles flutter from his lips, and Luffy listlessly popped one, scattering it into a hundred smaller ones, refracting the leering, half-lidded face of an eel.

He almost yelled, reeling backwards from the pointed teeth, stretched wide into a grin.

"Helllo your majesssty," The creature purred, lazily flicking its tail and curling around where Luffy was sitting on the sandy ocean floor, staring at the eel in shock. "It's a pleasssure."

The eel chuckled, and Luffy's gaze tracked it, head turning to keep the animal in his sights. Eels were dangerous, their shocks easily able to stun even a large mer into stillness, and those shocks could stop their gills from filtering any oxygen, killing them through suffocation.

"Hi," He said carefully, flicking his tail till he was upright in the water again, ready to dart away or punch it if it tried to get him. "Did you need anything?"

"No, your majessty, that ssshould be my quessstion," The eel's grin was kind of creepy, honestly, stretched wide to show the terrifyingly sharp teeth.

Luffy, however, was more preoccupied by the eel's words than its teeth. "Why?" He asked it, brow furrowed as he watched it.

"Well, it ssseemsss that you're having a little problem with the humansss."

"I don't!" Luffy said firmly, crossing his arms.

"Well then," The eel's grin grew wider, "Is it possssible you have a problem with the mer?"

"Nope," Luffy said, same strong tone to his voice, and the eel curled around him, slimy tail just brushing his shoulders and almost making him shiver at the slippery touch.

"Are you sssure? Becaussse you ssseem more like you'd want to be up there than down here."

Luffy jolted, before he snorted derisively, resisting the urge to scrub at the bare skin. "No way. That's not possible, anyway."

A different voice, silky smooth and sweet, played through his ears, and fingertips brushed his shoulders, where the eel's tail had only just been earlier. "Oh, but it is."

Luffy whirled, taking in the sight of an exceptionally large lady with an octopus tail. Luffy's eyes went wide in his head, and he stared – he'd never seen a mer with a tail like an octopus's before.

"You see, I have a special sort of-," The octopus-lady tapped her red nail against her pursed lips, before smiling, showing teeth as pointed as the eel's next to him. "Magic, if you would. I can give you your heart's desire, if you wanted it."

Luffy's brow furrowed, and he stared at her in confusion. "But I'm happy here."

"Ah, but haven't you said that you wanted to be human – to be free and to have feet? I can give that to you, if you want. Easy as one, two, three." She moved, circling him like her eel had been doing moments before, and Luffy followed after her, turning his body till he almost felt dizzy. "Wouldn't you like to be a human? To explore the whole wide world, and find treasures and have adventures you'd never have below the waters?"

"I-," he started, about to protest, but instead he stared at his clenched hands and the scales that decorated his knuckles. His tail flicked into his vision, and the burning want he'd always experience surged back in full force, like someone had unstopped the dam he built up between that longing and his mind.

It was almost as though her words had turned the key that he used to keep his yearning tightly bound, and with her words all he could remember were the days he spent in storms, watching humans aboard their ships and struggling to pretend that one day he'd sail like they did, wild and free above the waves.

He stared defiantly at the other mer, clenching his hands till his knuckles turned white. "I want to run and dance and sail like they do! I don't want a tail anymore!"

She leaned her body along his own, propping her head on his shoulder, and Luffy could see from the corner of his eye the hint of a smile curling her lips. "Well, the beautiful Alvida could help you out with that, if you'd like," she offered, and her smirk stretched even wider.

Whisking her hand, a swirl of purple unfolded into a gleaming scroll right in front of him, tiny writing with rough flourishes to the letters. He reached for it, but the scroll darted away, Alvida following it.

"Ah-ah-ah," she tutted, shaking her finger at him, "First we have to discuss payment. You see, no-one works for free."

"What?" Luffy asked, brow furrowing again, "But I don't have anything. What am I meant to pay you with?"

Alvida's eyes looked cold, like frost along the shore's edge, and her grin didn't reach them. "Well, you see, I'd just like one thing from you. Just one itty bit thing."

Before he could blurt impatiently for her to just spit it out, Alvida moved the contract closer, a pen appearing in the water. "Your voice. Trade me your voice, and I'll give you legs."

Luffy's hand fluttered to his throat, fingertips brushing his Adam's apple, and he could feel his swallow. "My voice? But-"

"But?" Alvida asked teasingly, before she smiled again, patronisingly. "Oh you still want to talk, huh? Well," she tapped her fingernails against her chin as though she were considering something, and her voice dropped into a low purr that made Luffy shiver as though the waters around them had turned to ice, "If you can get the little green-haired human to fall in love with you, and give me his heart before two weeks is over, then you can stay a human forever and I'll give you your voice back."

Alvida's grin leered closer to him, and Luffy shied away, wrinkling his nose slightly. "But if you can't…Well. Then you're mine."

Get someone to fall in love with him? Love was an undefinable concept; it was something he just felt, like how he felt about Ace or Usopp or Nami- how was he meant to make someone else feel it?

And to give Alvida someone else's heart-

She couldn't possibly mean his literal heart, right?

"Tick-tock," Alvida said, and Luffy felt panic well up in him, desperation at the knowledge that his last chance to see land would be gone. "Going once, going twice-"

"Deal!" Luffy quickly shouted before she could finish, and grabbed the pen that floated by the contract, signing his name in blocky, messy letters.

"Luffy no!" Usopp yelled from behind him, and Luffy turned to see his friend frantically swimming towards him, obviously having doubled back to search for Luffy when the merman hadn't been seen at the borders of Atlantis.

"Excellent," Alvida hissed, the contract vanishing again, and Luffy suddenly felt a burn tear up his tail, as though he'd gone to close to the heat vents in the ocean's floor. He slapped his hands over his mouth to prevent himself from crying out at the pain, and his tail went a painful, tingly sort of numb; he couldn't move a single inch.

Usopp reached them, a frantic panic on his features and Luffy opened his mouth the comfort his friend's fear; he swallowed water, choking on it like he'd never before, and thrashed, trying to get his gills to work-

But humans didn't have gills.

Usopp, seeing how he clutched at his throat, trying to breathe in air where there was none, smashed into his side, trying to force him towards the surface. Luffy grabbed onto his friend, desperately trying to struggle with him but barely able to move.

He couldn't feel his tail – he couldn't feel anything below his hips.

His lungs burned with the need to breathe when they finally hit the surface, and he immediately coughed up water, swallowing air and spluttering when they were hit by the swell.

The salt water made him feel sick, and Usopp struggled to get him to the beach, Luffy's unresponsive limbs barely able to keep him above the water. Finally, after torturously long moments of being battered by waves and fighting to get to the shore, Luffy felt his tail-

Knees-

Feet-

He staggered, bending legs beneath his body, and salt water streamed off him as he half-crawled, half-walked further from the reach of the waves.

He had legs! He had legs!

He felt like screaming his excitement, like the pure exhilaration he felt would bubble up from his lips, and turned to face the worried-looking Usopp, words of delight on his tongue-

But not a single sound came from his lips.

He blinked, his excitement fading as quickly as it came, and his quavering legs gave out beneath him, dumping him unceremoniously into the shallow waters again with a splash.

Luffy tried to click his tongue, or whistle, or pop or anything-

Nothing. Hand flying to his throat, he saw Usopp's look of horror, could see the bubbles and hear the clicks that Usopp made in his panic, but now he couldn't even understand most of what Usopp said, only just associating the words with Usopp's tail flicks and fin flickers.

Usopp's tail flicked to the sides as he worriedly swam back and forth in front of his friend, and Luffy tried to hold him comfortingly, but his hands had rough calluses where there used to be scales and Usopp flinched away.

"Luffy, Luffy, Luffy-" Was all he could understand from Usopp's panicked whistles, as the fish repeated his name over and over again.

With no way to properly communicate, Luffy stared at Usopp with wounded eyes, and could see how his unhappy disposition was reflected in his friend's own gaze.

Abruptly, Usopp's eyes lit up and he jolted to the side, looking for some way to explain to Luffy the idea he'd had. His fins rested against Luffy's leg comfortingly, cool against the flesh, and he then flung his fins out to the side, flapping them up and down.

Was he miming something-?

Nami!

Luffy frantically nodded his head, agreeing, and Usopp slipped further into the water, giving him one last worried glance before he zipped away, obviously trying to reach Nami as fast as he could. Nami could talk to him in human; even if Luffy couldn't reply, at least he'd be able to understand what they were saying to him.

Tentatively, he took his hands from the sand, running his fingertips across shins and kneecaps, wriggling his toes.

He had toes.

Even if his mood now was soured and gloomy by the realisation that his impulsiveness may've cost him more than just a tail and the ability to breathe underwater, Luffy couldn't help the giggle that sprung to his lips as he stared at his new feet.

His laugh burst from his lips, and his hands moved faster now, exploring every new part of these human legs; ankles and toes and knees and legs. He had legs!

He was human!

He saw the 'v' of brushed aside water as Usopp skimmed beneath the surface, and flicked his gaze up to see Nami soaring above the waves.

Hey, she had his hat! And fabric, for some reason?

He grinned, waving at his friends, and Usopp glided to a stop, Nami dropping his hat and the fabric – which, as they settled, were revealed to be clothes from his grotto – into his lap and landing soon after.

"Luffy?" Nami asked cautiously, and Luffy grinned, nodding to show he'd heard her. Her expression of relief was palatable, and it soothed his guilt slightly, though that didn't last long. Her features swiftly morphed into one of anger once she realised he was okay, and her livid squawk made him quickly hide his head under his arms, knowing she'd gladly peck at his head for being, as she put it, 'so stupid'. "What were you thinking!? You traded your tail for legs? Are you kidding me!?"

Luffy pursed his lips, trying to figure out how she wanted him to reply to that.

Actually, she probably didn't, all things considered; Nami had already continued her enraged rant.

"You can't breathe underwater now. You can't swim! Did you even think this through? Why can't you speak?" Nami gave a squawk, her words dissolving from human back to seagull in her rage, but she managed to calm herself, giving a half-groan, half-sigh as she watched him.

Her expression drew from her angry glare to one of taut, pained worry. "Oh Luffy," she sighed, ruffling her feathers and watching him with concern in her eyes, "What have you done?"

Luffy shifted, feeling his happiness draining from him once again like the water through his now unwebbed fingers, and it was soon replaced with guilt at having caused that apprehension in his friends. Gently, he used his hand to stroke her frail head, and she sighed again, obviously trying to think of some way to get him out of the situation he'd managed to get stuck in.

"Alright, look. Humans wear clothes, right? So put those on for the mean time, and I'll figure out some way to fix you." Nami flexed her wing to point at the clothes in his lap, and, though her next words were more mumbled reassurances to herself, Luffy could still hear them, and the palpable worry. "You'll be fine. Usopp and I will figure it out."

As Nami muttered, Luffy squirmed into the clothes she'd bought him. The bright red vest was slightly too small, so he left it open rather than try and button it up, and he was pretty sure he had sand in his pants, but he supposed it was better than anything else.

Humans didn't really seem to like it when people went around without them on, which he personally thought was a bit strange. What was the problem with it? Mer didn't wear clothes and they got along just fine.

"Hello?"

The all froze, identical expressions of panic on their features, and Nami shared a frantic look with Usopp, before fluttering up and trying to shove Luffy into the ocean again. Realisation dawned on them at different times; Luffy first, Usopp next, Nami finally realising that trying to hide a human underwater wasn't the smartest idea – both because he now couldn't breathe beneath the waves, and because there was no reason for him to hide anymore considering that he was a proper human.

Because that's what he was now. He was human.

His hands rested against the weave of his hat, and Nami quickly flew away from him, just as the green-haired man that Luffy had saved last week came around the large rock Luffy'd been hidden behind.

Zoro stopped, blinking at the sight of him sprawled on the beach, and stared at Luffy. "Uh-," he started to say, trying to figure out what words to use, and Luffy grinned, waving one hand at the dumbstruck human.

"Are you- alright?" Zoro asked cautiously, looking more than a little bit shocked and confused by the fact that there was someone sitting on the beach with naught but a straw hat and a happy grin.

Luffy nodded, before trying to struggle to his new feet. Suffice to say, it didn't end well. He may've been fascinated with watching them and learning about them, but there was a difference between watching and actually knowing how to do something. His knees turned inwards and he plopped down on the sand again, slightly surprised at the fact he'd fallen.

Laughing at his own failure, he spotted Zoro move a bit closer to him, furrowed brow and confused look on his features. "You need a hand or something?"

Luffy screwed up his lips stubbornly, trying once more to stand, this time succeeding for a little while, but he went down again almost immediately when he tried to take a step. Zoro rolled his eyes, offering a hand down to Luffy, and the mer took it, using it to support him as he wobbled to his feet-

And almost fell down once more.

Zoro sighed in exasperation, using his hands to support Luffy's shoulders and preventing him from falling over again, and Luffy could see the gold flecks in his eyes, caught in an even stare. "Look, are you hurt? You're obviously not able to stand properly."

Luffy shook his head, but as he wobbled on his new feet, he saw Zoro's look of exasperation, and the hidden tone of concern that layered his voice. "You need some help. I'm going to carry you up to the castle and get the doctor to look at you, okay? Nod your head if you understand me."

Though he wanted to protest, Luffy couldn't exactly figure out how to walk in five minutes, and the concern in Zoro's voice was small but evident as he struggled to walk and move on his new legs.

Get the green-haired human to fall in love with you.

He gnawed lightly on his lip before giving a little nod, and firmly plunked his hat onto his head. Zoro, seeing that he'd now agreed, squatted slightly before picking Luffy up, cradling his body close.

He could feel the human's heart in his chest, a steady thump from where his arm was pressed into Zoro's torso, and he gave a little shiver at the sudden cold wave that went through his body in a rush.

And steal his heart.

What had he gotten himself into?

AN: I FORGOT TO POST THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO LEFT COMMENTS ON THE FIRST CHAPTER I AM SO SORRY. I was in a bit of a rush to upload it, and it completely flew my mind! My apologies, and my heartfelt, adoring thanks to a84vpszy for their two reviews, somefangirl, darkspider, Nezkov Sou, Iany-chan, BlantantBookworm, and my unnamed guest for their reviews on chapter one!

Also, super special thanks to the gorgeous flitewulf, for their sketches of 'lil baby mer!Luffy.

I really really appreciate all of your encouragement and compliments! This is actually my first foray into writing a longer-chaptered romance work for a really long time, so having so many people tell me to hang in there was really appreciated. Thank you! Hope you enjoyed this chapter as well!