Two weeks ago...

Aboard the Titania Theatre Ship

Rosalina Carson was considered by some to be an extravagant, flamboyant woman. Sure, she always wore the most detailed of frilled, rose-adorned dresses that danced along with her every step. Her peers envied her flawless grace as well as her long, blonde stylized curls. The truth was she didn't comb her hair; she woke up in the morning looking that way. Her wardrobe merely reflected her taste in style and her seamstress skills, augmented by her experience in costume design so each dress was as opulent as possible yet kept her movements fluid and free. Not to mention each dress hid just enough of her ample curves to keep her male admirers guessing. This was a woman who could make falling on her face look graceful and beautiful, not that she ever did. No one would ever guess she was the mother of two grown boys.

The Titania was Rosalina's pride and joy. A massive galleon adorned with artwork, statues, and gold and marble trim on its every curve. The ship itself was truly a work of art, as a theatre should be. That deck had held many different sets for plays, operas, kabuki, and anything else the troupe could manage. They were no more than a dozen actors and workers and one animal, and yet even with such a small cast and even less of a budget to pay them, the Titania was known throughout the seas for its performances. Rosalina knew that she had two fortunes to thank for that.

The first was of course her son, Jude. Jude grew up for the stage life, and everything he did excelled in it. He was always the hero, the protagonist, the leading man. His flair for drama and his exceptionally good looks practically demanded the spotlight as well, as Rosalina was aware that a good portion of their profits came not from fans of the theatre, but from star-struck teenage girls. Unfortunately, this meant Jude never had the chance to develop a sense of humility.

The other of Titania's blessings was a boy Rosalina only wish she could have given birth to known as Hammie. Born of the same seafaring father as Jude, but of a different woman, one Rosalina would never know. She knew that she should feel jealousy and envy towards said other woman and spite towards the boy, but Rosalina raised Hammie from infancy and could not help but consider him her own child regardless of blood. She hadn't seen the boys' father since the fateful day years ago when he suddenly appeared desperate on her doorstep with an infant in his arms and begged her to look after him. She only knew he was somewhere on the Grand Line, but such is the seafaring life. Jude was three years Hammie's elder, and it showed. While Jude was the man in the spotlight, Hammie was the one manning the spotlight. Hammie was always such a shy but hardworking boy, needing Jude to stand up for him in their younger years. Even though Hammie always showcased real talent when he would fill in on dress rehearsals, he would never take the stage no matter how much Rosalina and Jude tried to make him.

Instead, Hammie made himself comfortable with every facet of the theatre not seen by the audience. He built the sets, engineered the special effects, repaired the boat and anything else that needed to be fixed, and did nearly all the manual labor necessary. Rosalina was never sure of the exact limits of Hammie's strength, as he could carry piles of wood and supplies without assistance, and once he even tugged the ship by himself through the last stretch to the harbor by tying a rope around him to the ship and swimming the rest of the way. Sometimes Rosalina wondered just who Hammie got that strength from anyway.

At the moment, Jude had been practicing a fight scene with a few of the other cast members when he "accidentally" stepped onto some of the set Hammie was painting. A tired and familiar old story to Rosalina. Jude would often provoke Hammie, usually by messing with whatever he was working on, and then the mayhem would begin. Hammie would yell at Jude, Jude would make some snarky quip, the two would fight, and Jude would storm off, while pretending to be offended, to the nearest gathering of young women while Hammie was stuck cleaning up the mess.

Rosalina would have none of it this time. She hoisted a large white megaphone the size of her torso to her lips, a megaphone which would morph her elegant serenade of a voice into a demanding boom. "JUDE! HAMMIE! IN MY QUARTERS! NOW!"

"I can't believe you two. We're less than a week until opening night, the set's only half-finished, and you decide to throw a brawl?"

"I'm sorry, Mom. I'll fix it and finish everything right away." As usual, Hammie bowed his head and took the blame for everything. Rosalina sometimes wished it wasn't this hard to get mad at him. Now she felt like the guilty party for scolding him.

Jude, on the other hand, was less apologetic. "You should be more careful next time, dear brother. If I had suffered a sprain or gotten a blemish on my face, we might have needed to postpone the performance, and my fans would simply not tolerate it."

This, of course, only made Rosalina pull up her megaphone once again in the close quarters and shout at the top of her lungs. "I DON'T CARE IF YOU BREAK BOTH YOUR LEGS! THE NEXT TIME YOU GO MAKING TROUBLE ON MY SET, YOU'LL BE TAP-DANCING IN TWO MATCHING PLASTER CASTS!" The wood started to splinter and crack along the walls from the sheer force of the sound and the two young men clutched their ears in agony.

"Now apologize to your brother before I get mad." Hands and megaphone at her hips, Rosalina tapped her foot impatiently.

Jude blinked twice in succession, before his hand reached for his forehead, as he assumed one of his many tragic roles. "Oh, my dear brother," Jude broke out in a high falsetto voice, "My transgressions against you have been many, but this time I have gone much too far," He desperately grabbed Hammie's hands, "Never, never could I atone for this grievous offense against my dear, loving sibling.," Falling to his knees, "Nevertheless, I shan't rest; I shall climb every mountain with a galleon strapped to my chest and swim across every ocean with an anchor strapped to my legs if that is to be my punishment," Finally, Jude broke down into tears and buried his face in Hammie's arm, "Could you find it in the infinite kindness that is your heart to forgive this poor, lowly street performer?"

"Aw, you didn't mean anything by it, Jude. Of course I forgive you." Hammie, as usual, was none the wiser as Rosalina facefell.

"Well, now that that's settled," Jude shot back up with completely dry eyes and demeanor, "I'm going to clean up and visit my adoring fans." With that, Jude was out of the room and off to do his daily schmoozing.

The sad thing to Rosalina was that this was Jude's impression of bad acting. "I really should have spanked that boy more as a child," Turning to Hammie, "You shouldn't have to keep cleaning up after everyone here. You aren't the janitor."

"Well, technically I am," Hammie beamed with just a little bit of pride.

"True, but more importantly, you're my son," Rosalina extended a hand to hold her son's face, "I worry about you. There's more to life than work, you know. You don't always have to clean up after everyone else's messes around here."

"Yeah, but if I don't, who will?" Hammie smiled, and Rosalina had no response but to smile back at her son's simple logic.

"I love you," Rosalina embraced her son and hugged him tight.

"I love you too, Mom."

Later that day...

"Are you sure you don't want that delivered? I won't charge extra," The shopkeeper stared at the large man carrying several hundred pounds of lumber over one shoulder and a bag of nails in the other.

"Nah, I'm good. It'll be faster this way," Hammie straightened out the large pile of planks he could only awkwardly grip with his arm and shoulder, but otherwise didn't seem to struggle with the actual weight, "It's kind of a rush job."

"Okay... Well, don't strain yourself," After exchanging farewells, Hammie began the trek back to the ship carrying the large pile of lumber, when a trenchcoat and a black ten-gallon hat blocked his path. It wasn't until further inspection that Hammie noticed there was a man inside the outfit.

"Excuse me, sir, can I get through?"

"Excuse me, young'un," Replied the trenchcoat in a rasp, "But I'm lookin' for a kid goes by the name of Hammie."

"Um... my name's Hammie."

"Bigger'n I thought," The man pulled back his coat to show off two flintlock pistols. "Yer comin' with me, big kid."

Meanwhile, just outside the Titania, hidden among the shadows lay many concealed trenchcoat figures, watching and waiting as their leader whispered directions among them.

"All right, lads, you know what we're here for. The boy gets taken alive, everyone else is fair game."

On cue, the shadows leapt forward and the crowd of trenchcoats stormed the ship, no longer taking care to hide or keep silent. Guns and swords at hand, they charged up the gangplank onto the ship, where they were greeted with an empty, half-finished theatre set.

"What the...? Where is everyone?"

"I'm afraid you just made the biggest mistake of your lives," came a loud, echoing voice from all around. Suddenly, several spotlights shone on the crowd of trenchcoats. "Never attack performers on their own stage."

The only light source, the spotlights, seemed to be aimed specifically to blind as many of the trenchcoats as possible. The trenchcoats found themselves surrounded by even more shadowed figures, all armed to the teeth, who all launched forward and attacked the crowd, led by Jude's silhouette.

Half of the trenchcoats were knocked down almost immediately from the deluge of swords, bullets, and blunt instruments. The other half either tried to fight back or scatter in any direction possible.

Three of the trenchcoats gave in to their flight instincts and successfully slipped away from the chaos to another side room, seemingly alone. "Kabuki Ninja Technique:" The trenchcoats searched around for the voice, but to no avail. "From up above!" One of the trenchcoats vanished as an invisible force pulled him up into shadows of the rafters. The remaining two trenchcoats in panic looked upward to try and find their attacker. "From down beneath!" A figure in a black, skintight gi and mask burst from a trapdoor to trip the two trenchcoats with his arms and then pinned the trenchcoats' limbs to the floor with twin sais. He disappeared back below the trapdoor before the trenchcoats even knew what hit them. "Beware the kabuki play's shadows."

Three more of the trenchcoats made it from the main brawl, only to find themselves lost in a backstage labyrinth of dark wooden cutouts. "The hell is this?" After getting themselves lost literally behind the scenes, the trenchcoats tried to make some sense of what was going on, "We're gettin' our asses handed to us by a bunch of carnies!"

"Arf Arf Arf!" Suddenly, a small, red and white furred dog blocked the passageway, yapping at the trenchcoats.

"Damn little mutt." One of the trenchcoats stepped forward and pointed his pistol at the dog. "I'll take my frustrations out on you!" A sharp crack interrupted him, as the pistol disappeared and a sharp pain lashed at his hand. Now, there were two figures blocking the passage: the barking dog and a young red-haired woman in an animal trainer's outfit holding a whip in one hand and the trenchcoat's pistol in the other.

"Don't you dare hurt my cute little Maggie. Ready, Maggie?" The dog barked eagerly in response as her trainer merely pointed in direction. "Lion Pounce!" At the command, Maggie leaped forward. In the air, Maggie quickly grew in size and her limbs became more feline in structure, until she wasn't a dog, but a full-grown lioness that pounced on the first trenchcoat, raking into its flesh with sharp claws and teeth. "Snake Bite!" The lion pounced to the next trenchcoat, this time shrinking as her limbs shriveled and folded into her body as fur changed to scales as a snake coiled around and bit the second trenchcoat in the leg. "Head butt!" Maggie coiled around the second trenchcoat and launched like a spring at the third, this time shifting into a billy goat and ramming into the third trenchcoat's gut head first. "And now for the Big Finale!" The billy goat grew into an impossibly large scaled figure with leathery wings, as a dragon now leered down at the three terrified trenchcoats below.

"Have mercy, please!"

"That's what you get when you mess with Maggie, the only dog with the devil fruit power to turn into a Chimera, and Durova, the world's only Chimera-dog trainer!"

"Carnies with devil fruit powers? What the hell did we get ourselves into?"

"Finish 'em off Maggie!" The dragon roared loudly as the three trenchcoats fainted in fear.

Two more trenchcoats crawled their way away from the brawl and found a door. Quickly hurrying inside, they were met with the director herself, still clad in her elegant black and red rose dress, already swinging down the large megaphone on the first trenchcoat's head, slamming his head down and embedding it in the floor.

"Tch, now look what you did to my good, clean floor. Dirty mongrels. This..." Pulling the megaphone up to her lips, she shouted at the top of her lungs, "IS A CLOSED SET!" The force of pure sound shot both trenchcoats flying out of the office.

"Time for the finale: Tempest Dance!" Jude twirled gracefully, spinning his rapier and slicing down four more of the trenchcoats, leaving only their leader left.

"Damnit... This has gotta be a nightmare," The lead trenchcoat slowly backed towards the exit, both hands shakily wielding pistols.

"A midsummer's nightmare to be sure," Jude responded with a smile and his rapier, "Ahh... foolhardy pirate attacks are much more satisfying than fight scene rehearsals."

"This... this isn't over! You may have gotten the drop on us, but at least we got one of his sons."

"Sons?" Jude advanced forward, "Praytell, what ever do you speak of?" The trenchcoat wasn't about to let himself be captured or worse, and bolted off the ship, only to run smack into a brick wall of a chest.

"I think he's talking about us, Jude." Hammie, blocking the exit, stood nearly a whole foot above the rat-faced little man, who yelped in surprise and dashed off, "Careful! There's a-" Suddenly, the floor beneath the fleeing trenchcoat fell away and his screams echoed as he plummeted with a splash directly in the ocean, "trap... door. Dammit, I needed to tell him which hospital his friend was at."

The performers stood there dumbfounded at Hammie. "You're saying you took one of these guys to a doctor?"

"Well, he couldn't very well take himself, could he? Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to talk to the Director." Hammie excused himself as he passed by the rest of the performers and went directly to Rosalina's quarters.

"Something's wrong," noted one of the performers, "He didn't even comment on the set damage."

Rosalina grimaced at the splintered gap in the wall where there once was a door to her office. Sighing, she set about cleaning up the rest of the place when a knock came on one of the wallboards. She turned to see Hammie standing outside the former door to the office. Rosalina breathed a sigh of relief, until Hammie spoke.

"Mom, we need to talk."

Rosalina flinched. She hadn't heard Hammie speak with such a serious tone since the day he found out that she wasn't his real mother. "What's the matter, dear? It's not like this is the first time some misfits tried to give us trouble." She tried to mask her unease, but her voice wavered.

"Yeah, but these guys weren't after money, they were after me. Jude too."

"So? It's not like they had any talent."

"Mom, they were after me because of Dad."

Rosalina already knew where this was going, and although she so desperately wanted to dissuade Hammie, she couldn't find the words. "Hammie..."

"But they aren't the first, are they?" This time Hammie's was the voice that wavered with guilt, "How many of the pirates who tried to kill us in the past were after me for the same reason? How many more will keep coming?"

Rosalina placed a hand on Hammie's shoulder to console him, "Hammie, it's not your fault. You can't hold yourself responsible."

"No?" Hammie's voice rose in rage as his fist slammed down on the desk, destroying where it struck as Rosalina's flinched back. "What happens when someone finally does get hurt? It's not just you and Jude, this entire troupe is my family! Eventually, it'll be more than the set which gets shot!" Hammie took several deep breaths and composed himself before continuing much more calmly, "I think you need to tell me everything about Dad, and I do mean everything."

Rosalina paused and several minutes passed with neither speaking. Finally, Rosalina slowly and somberly sat down at her desk and began writing on a sheet of paper. "Your father... He never talked about his life outside of our relationship much. Only that he's a merchant who traveled to and from the Grand Line." She lay her pen down and handed the paper to Hammie, which contained a beautiful script of calligraphy. "The last I heard from him was the day you came into my life. I don't even know what happened, if he's still alive, or anything but he did give me the name of this place."

Hammie glanced over the slip of paper. "Midsummer Island?"

"An island somewhere in the Grand Line, though for the life of me, I don't know where. He told me if there I absolutely needed to find him to look for him there. I know you have a lot of questions about him, and I know I can't answer them." Hammie's head glanced up to see Rosalina's eyes start to well up with tears, "I also knew this day was coming for awhile, but for some reason, I still just can't..." Her face buried itself in her arms on the table, and suddenly the sleeves of her handmade dress were soaked in tears. She could barely get out any words without being drowned out by her own sobbing. "I'm slipping. There was once a time when I would only cry on cue." Instantly Hammie was by her side, hugging her and attempting to console her. She soon regained her composure, at least enough to form coherent sentences anyway. Rosalina lifted her heavy head up, mascara streaming down her face, mixing with her tears. "It's okay. All boys leave home some day, no matter how much we as mothers dread it."

"I'm sorry, Mom. I didn't want to make you cry."

Rosalina stood up to hug her son back. "Shush you. The silver lining in all this is I won't worry about you as much because I know that you'll succeed. Everything you've ever done has been a success. You're the strongest, kindest, most intelligent boy I've ever known. The only thing I worry about is someone exploiting you. The world is a dangerous place for one who isn't wary of its ways to walk in it."

"That's why I'll be going with him." Standing in the doorway, holding a glass of wine in one hand and his ego in the other, was Jude, smiling and generally ruining the mood.

"Jude!"

Sauntering in, Jude took a seat by the door and sipped his wine, "Oh, don't look so surprised. Or did you forget that I was one of their targets too?"

"Jude, you don't have to..." Hammie meekly started.

"Save it," Jude quickly interrupted, "I know better than to let you go out on your own, lest you promote yourself from the doormat of the crew to the doormat of the world. Besides, the plot has become quite stagnant around here." Jude gave his mother and brother his cool, confident stare and smile, but when he looked up, he saw both lunging for him in mid-air. "Wait-!" Hammie and Rosalina both cut him off as they hugged him with the strength and ferocity of a bear. Two sets of arms wrapped around his chest and squeezed as Jude became distinctly aware of what it must feel like to be crushed to death. "Ribs... crushed... suit... ruffled..."

"You're the best brother ever!" Hammie praised loudly.

"Both of my sons finally leaving home and seeing the world, I've never been so sad and so proud in my life!" As Rosalina sobbed tears of joy, she simultaneously whispered into Jude's ear. "You will look after your brother, and you will not take advantage of your brother, and if I anything happens to Hammie, so be it I will drag you back to the ship myself; is that understood?"

"Yes, Mother," Jude managed to squeak out between hugs.

Two weeks later...

"That weekend the play was canceled, and all the tickets were refunded. Instead, the entire troupe spent three full days and nights throwing a going-away party without rest. Their regular fans were also invited, and the great Jude Carson was never without beautiful company. Hammie on the other hand, spent the weekend confessing his love and losing his virginity to..."

"THAT NEVER HAPPENED!" Hammie, whose face was now several shades redder than before, shouted at Jude.

"Please, Hammie, do not interrupt while I'm telling the story," Jude replied as if there was nothing damaging or abnormal with his words.

"But you can't just make up details like that!"

"It's called creative direction, and every story needs at least a little. Everyone likes a nice steamy romance scene. Besides, you'll like who you end up with."

"I DON'T CARE!" The two quickly devolved from simply Hammie interrupting Jude's 'creative direction' to full-out fighting. Meanwhile, Brody and Wendy sat on deck watching the spectacle as they ate some of the gourmet-level cuisine Takashi had scraped together from leftovers.

"They're definitely more entertaining than I thought," Brody chuckled.

"I know! It's like they're actually arguing!" Wendy beamed, wide-eyes glued to the spectacle.

"I don't think they're actually acting."

"Ssh! This is the best part." Wendy munched her food excitedly and focused her stare on the two quarreling brothers. Brody shrugged his shoulders and remained quiet for the rest of the 'performance'.

Author's Notes:

Well, that took a lot longer than expected. Hopefully the laws of momentum apply to writing too and I can get another chapter in less than a month. :P Thanks for the reviews so far, they really do give me a lot more motivation to get this story going, so keep 'em coming!

Baka~chan: The goal for each chapter is at least 3,000 words. I probably won't be posting them more than one at a time, I just wanted to get a foundation going first. The majority of the characters will be OC, but canon characters may show up every now and then (given One Piece geography, I don't really see how one could NOT run into Laboon at the start of the Grand Line.)

Rexan: _ My bad. Hammie's name change was an edit I made after writing. Hamlet is his actual name, but he's just known as Hammie. The change was made due to... well... you'll see. :P

Nine88: No plans for Luffy to show up yet, and if he eventually does, it won't be for a LOOOONG time. They don't have an official crew name yet since they were literally just formed. They don't even have a Jolly Roger or a bounty yet. But that'll change soon.